Qass _ 

Book. 0) 
Copyright 

CDEXBIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MAGIC WELLS 



BY 

JULIAN CLIFFORD JAYNES 

11 



BOSTON 
PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS CO. 
(incorporated) 
1922 



3 ^ 



Copyright, 1922 
By CLARA B. JAYNES 
All rights reserved 



©CI.A683937 

OCT 28 22 



®hts book is heMcateb 

to the men, women and children of the 
First Unitarian Society in Newton 
at West Newton, Massachusetts. 

Their joys and sorrows, 
their love and loyalty 
were held in the heart of their minister 
throughout his pastorate of thirty-eight years, 
the full span of his work as preacher, 
from ordination until death. 

May there be found, within these printed pages, 
the uplift of his spoken word, 
his call to u life more abundant". 



West Newton, Massachusetts 
November, 1922 



To the critical reader, it may be said that these 
sermons were prepared for delivery from the pulpit. 
It has been thought best to print them as they were 
preached by Mr. Jaynes, although they would have 
had his careful revision, had he intended them for 
publication. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Magic Wells 3 

Jeremiah and Human Nature 21 

Giving without Grieving 39 

Spiritual Nerve and Circumstances 55 

"Where hast thou Gleaned To-day?" .... 73 

Wrestling and Blessing 91 

"To Be or not to Be, — That is the Question" . Ill 

The Beatitudes 129 

To Young People 151 

Coming to One's Self 165 

The Adventurous Adam 183 

Open and Shut Doors 199 

The Layman and his Church 217 

Opportunity 235 

Alone 255 

A Little Child 273 

The Opening of the Books 291 



MAGIC WELLS 



! 



MAGIC WELLS 



"The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this 
water, that I thirst not, neither ccme hither to 
draw." — John iv. 15. 

IT is the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well. 
She has come over the hard-beaten path 
that leads from her cottage, to fill the house- 
hold jar with water for the day. It is an old, 
familiar, dreary task. A thousand times she 
has trod that path — a thousand times she has 
leaned over the stone curb and with aching 
arms lifted the dripping jar. A thousand 
times she has staggered upward to her cottage 
door, bearing upon her shoulders the wet and 
heavy burden. 

What does it all mean? This everlasting 
round of drudging effort! This monotonous 
struggle for raiment, food, and drink! Oh 
for the magician's power to banish all need of 
toil, and with a single word to bring the heart's 
desire! And here to-day she finds a stranger 
seated beside the well. It is the young 
prophet of Galilee. In gentle, persuasive 



4 



MAGIC WELLS 



speech he tells her of a certain water, to 
drink of which leaves no thirst behind. And 
she, poor simple soul, fails to catch his hidden 
meaning, and reads in the metaphor only a 
proclamation of freedom from the work and 
care of the day. Here is release from toil 
at last! 

No more weary trudging to Jacob's well! 
No more climbing up the hot pathway to the 
cottage door! Something for nothing! Bless- 
ing without effort! The magician's world at 
last, where to wish is to have and to ask is to 
receive! 

And so she eagerly cries, "Give me to 
drink of this water, that I thirst no more, 
neither come hither to draw!" And this 
woman's pathetic appeal is with us to-day. 
Nay, we have heard it through all the history 
of the past, breaking in now and then with 
its sad refrain, upon the marching music of 
the world, like plaintive echoes from the far- 
away Eden of indolence and ease. 

The prayer for nothing to do! The desire 
to escape the exactions of life, and at the same 
time to abide in the joy and fullness of life. 
The longing to flee from the harsh toil of exile 



MAGIC WELLS 



5 



and, unbarring the gates of Paradise, to enter 
once more into the soft and sensuous delights 
of a land where golden fruits drop into the 
open palm and gentle breezes fill the air with 
the perfume of a thousand flowers. 

" Something for nothing." It is a familiar 
sentiment. It is the prayer of hearts exhausted 
with the dull and heavy cares of the world. 
It is the petition of ignorant souls, who dream 
that idleness is peace. It is the utterance of 
sluggards and cowards, who seek a refuge 
where hands may be folded and pain unknown. 
It is the cry of adventurous selfishness and 
greed, that would snatch the gifts of God with- 
out paying the price of struggle and endeavor. 

"Open thy magic wells, O Lord, close be- 
side our way. Pour the cool waters upon 
our waiting lips. Give Thy heavenly blessings 
without measure. Ask of us no effort, no cross 
to bear, no obstacles to overcome, but strew 
our path with roses, arch the blue sky above 
our heads, and save us from all trial, struggle, 
and defeat." 

And what if that prayer were answered 
and the angels of God should hover over the 
earth, to work their enchantments upon the 



6 



MAGIC WELLS 



laws of life? Suddenly the world changes into 
a fairyland of prodigy and miracle. The har- 
vest ripens without the sower's toil. The tool 
works while the artisan sleeps. The poem 
breathes its lyric song without a thrill of the 
poet's soul. Aladdin's lamp is in every hand. 
A touch, and jewels fall like rain, the common 
dust transforms itself to gold, and every obsta- 
cle lifts and vanishes away like the morning 
mist. All effort banished — all burdens left 
behind! Xo more strife and stress of life. Xo 
more fierce battles for the good, or bitter 
marches toward the ideal. Xo love defeated, 
no friendship blighted. Xo heart made sick 
with hope deferred. Only ease and joy, success 
and victory. 

0 poor, monotonous, afflicted world! 0 
wretched humanity cursed with the blessings 
of the easy way and the painless life! Where 
are your heroes now? Where are the men 
who pass from strength to strength, as they 
climb the Calvaries of life? Where are the 
saints who win their sainthood through fires 
of suffering and pain? 

Where is the manhood, the womanhood 
that only adversity, temptation, struggle, — 
hard, enduring effort, — can create? 



MAGIC WELLS 7 

The sinews of character atrophy and die. 
The pulse of thought runs low, because there 
is nothing to sound a challenge. The soul's 
visions are no more, because the eye of the 
spirit has lost its power to see. 

The zest of life has departed, the stir and 
lift of great incentives fail, the creative joy of 
difficulties overcome and barriers broken down 
is never experienced by the human soul. All 
is one dead level of passive acceptance, of sunny 
existence, of stagnant, lifeless content. 

Call back the angels, O God, and deliver 
us from this spell of death! Give us back the 
world of effort, strife, and pain. Lift the en- 
chantment, that once more toil shall be the 
price of reward, achievement of power, struggle 
of victory. 

And lo, that prayer is already answered 
in things as they are, in things as they have 
been from the foundations of the world. The 
universe is built on the principle of nothing 
for nothing and of something for something. 
Sitting idly in the shade waiting for the charity 
of God, the man perishes of starvation. Limp 
and whining before the gates of good, trust- 



8 



MAGIC WELLS 



ing some magic sesame seed that shall swing 
them back on their hinges, is ever a foolish 
and worthless dream. 

The keys of the world are in strenuous 
hands, — hands calloused with toil, hands tense 
with determination, hands strong with the 
discipline of service, hands pierced with the 
nails of crucifixion and scarred with the flames 
of trial. 

"Ho, every one that thirsteth," cries the 
old-time prophet, "come ye to the waters, 
and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, 
and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk with- 
out money and without price." The prophet 
did not know his universe. Never did God 
issue that proclamation. Never has the world 
so cheapened its values and sent them beg- 
ging in the streets. It cries: "Come, here is 
strength, make thyself strong. Here is good- 
ness, make thyself good. Here is beauty, make 
thyself beautiful. Bring your efforts — bring 
your industry, energy, thought, self-denial, 
consecration, devotion, love, — and for every 
united endeavor of mind and heart, I, the Uni- 
verse, I, the law of God, will render you good 
for good, value for value." 



MAGIC WELLS 



9 



So speaks the Creative Will through his- 
tory and fact and experience. So stands the 
eternal order: "Nothing for nothing — some- 
thing for something." So the golden grain 
follows in the wake of the gashing plow, 
victory blesses the impact of the strong arm, 
and truth opens her treasure to the earnest 
and aggressive mind. 

And the garden of our great civilization, 
with its wide sunlit paths, planted with com- 
forts and blessings and privileges, all abloom 
with the graces and heroisms of humanity, 
was won through effort, toil, and pain, and 
stands as an eternal refutation of the doctrine 
that the universe is a giver of alms, and that 
free admission to Utopia is the birthright 
of the children of God. 

Consider the principle in its application 
to what we call the practical affairs of life. 
How commonplace it is! Of course, we know 
that no victory comes without the onset and 
the strife. That song our ears have heard 
from childhood hours, and round our necks, 
like threaded beads, have hung the proverbs 
of the days: "Nothing venture, nothing have"; 



10 



MAGIC WELLS 



"Labor conquers all things"; "Over difficul- 
ties to the stars"; "To him who wins it, be- 
longs the palm" ; "Without the cross, without 
the crown." And yet we do not learn. 

Fancy, hope, and wish bewitch the reason 
and blur the letters of the maxim. Still we 
seek for wells where no drawing need be done. 
Still we ask for knowledge unwon, for peace 
undeserved, for wealth unearned. Still we 
dream that some day the god of fortune, pass- 
ing by, will fling a prize into our waiting 
arms and save us from all conflict and toil. 
How true that is! It is the delusion of every 
time. It is the fever that burns the veins and 
distempers the brain of many a man. Here 
is the opulent world! Behold its heaped- 
up treasures! Gold and silver and luxury 
and power and knowledge and privilege and 
popularity and opportunity, all flung together 
in one great shining, fascinating mass. 

And the man standing before it, so close 
that his hands can touch it, wonders why he 
cannot reach out and seize the prize he wants, 
wonders why he must turn back and toil and 
slave year after year with head and hand, 
before the treasure can be his. He is the 



MAGIC WELLS 



11 



student, seeking the founts of knowledge and 
dismayed at the long and winding road thereto. 
He is the youth, looking toward the arena of 
business, impatient with all the petty disci- 
pline that intervenes. He is the young crafts- 
man, standing before the master's work, rebel- 
lious at the years that require obedience for an 
equal skill. "Why all this waiting?" he cries. 
"Why plod and struggle through all these 
golden years? Give me, to-day, O Fate, 
the success I crave, and spare me this drudg- 
ery and toil!" 

And then the tempter comes to beguile the 
impatient soul. What nets he spreads for 
restless feet! "I give thee all, only fall down 
and worship me. Seize the honor and let 
all merit go. Take the shortest way to wealth, 
and forswear your noble maxims. Cover your 
poverty of skill so long as the wage is secure. 
Hazard all on the cast of a die; some have lost, 
but they were clumsy and dull. You are 
Fortune's favorite, and when Fortune smiles, 
the world smiles too." O foolish youth, O 
poor, confiding bird, to be caught by such 
chaff! God is not mocked, and the world is 
not deceived. You cannot cheat the Uni- 



12 



MAGIC WELLS 



verse, or bribe the divine laws to shield your 
infidelity. 

Woe be to the man who believes that he 
can outwit the mighty order of things and 
stand safe and free in the world. The time 
shall come when the hand of retribution shall 
reach down from out the clouds, strip off the 
mask, expose the sham and bare his poverty 
in the sight of men. And who so poor as he 
who wxars the crown on an empty head! 
What failure so great as the success that ad- 
vertises the incompetency of the man who 
claims it? 

No, the long way is the only way. It is 
the way of preparation, of discipline, of expe- 
rience. Head and hand grow strong with exer- 
cise. Every difficulty conquered becomes an 
ally. Every problem solved turns into power. 
Every task performed is a step in the stairway 
toward longer vision and grander heights. 

The god of luck is dead. But opportunity 
is alive. Every day it sends an empty chariot 
to your door. Who shall mount the chariot 
step and drive forward to success? Not the 
man of puny hand and feeble will. Not the 
man who has wasted his strength in wishes 



MAGIC WELLS 



13 



and dreamed of an easy world. But the man 
whom the hour has found ready for the chal- 
lenge, whose arm has been made strong and 
brain clear and heart fearless by pluck and 
service in the past — he it is who gathers up the 
waiting reins and guides the roaring wheels to 
the battle-line of the world's affairs. 

There must be a boy bravely mastering 
the tasks of his time, there must be a youth 
trusting not in fairy wands, but patiently, 
intelligently, hopefully doing the work which 
he has to do, before there can be a man with 
fine and ripened powers fit to meet the grander 
privilege, and prepared to wear the crown of 
success. To him the world is generous, because 
he has been generous to the world. To him 
life offers its treasure, because he has offered 
himself to life. ^ To him the Lord of the Uni- 
verse calls: "Thou hast been faithful over the 
things of yesterday, I will make thee ruler over 
the things of to-day. Enter thou into the 
kingdom prepared for thee from the foundations 
of the world." 

The same principle commands in the mak- 
ing of the moral life. In classic mythology we 



14 



MAGIC WELLS 



are told that Minerva sprang full-armed and 
complete from the forehead of Jove; but a 
ripened moral character is never the free gift 
of Heaven, nor is ever a perfect soul dropped 
out of the generous skies. Character is the 
fruit of the spirit's experience. It is the dimen- 
sions of the soul at any given stage of its growth. 

As the acorn holds in its bosom all the 
promise of a future greatness and yet must 
break the enclosing shell and go up to meet the 
summer suns and winter blasts, go up to 
wrestle through all the years with the forces 
of the air, before it can become the completed 
tree — so the soul grows from more to more 
only as it flings itself into all the varying con- 
ditions of life and stores up within itself what 
life gives in return. The acorn would always 
remain an acorn unless it left its secure and 
cozy shell. 

The soul would always be a feeble, undevel- 
oped thing unless it went forth to meet the 
conflicts of the world. Character is the answer 
to that forward thrust and effort. It gathers 
power and vision as it moves on — yesterday 
what the years have made it — to-day richer 
by to-day's experiences — to-morrow facing new 



MAGIC WELLS 



15 



possibilities of strength and worth. Nowhere 
is there a promise for the stagnant life; no- 
where is peace bestowed or virtue given or joy 
insured to the heart idle and inert, hoping to 
evade the effort and the trial. 

And yet how often we dream of a moral 
life where ease and comfort rule! How often, 
amid conflicts and perplexities and doubts and 
temptations, we cry out for some moral Ely- 
sium, where the soul is not tried and the cross 
is unknown! Oh for a world where it is easy 
to be good and impossible to go astray, where 
tears never fall and hearts never break and 
the battles of the spirit come again no more! 

Ah, but you cannot have the gifts of ex- 
perience without the experience also. You 
cannot possess the fruits of the spirit without 
having plowed and planted and watched and 
waited in the fields of your own nature. 

Heaven is not heaven until you have fought 
your way up to its gates. You cannot under- 
stand joy without sorrow, nor peace without 
conflict, nor feel the moral mastery until you 
have felt the moral weakness. And so God 
in his providence has set a price upon character, 
and ordained us every one to draw for our- 



16 



MAGIC WELLS 



selves at the wells of the spirit. It is His way 
of making men and women, not spiritual 
dolls, not soft, invertebrate characters unable 
to stand alone, but great, strong, self-poised, 
divine human beings. And so effort is required. 
Valiant energy is asked for. 

The way is beset with temptations, self- 
denials, burdens, depths of despair. We meet 
them one by one. On and on we go. Here 
a little paradise where we pray to be let alone, 
but the trumpet wakes us from our dangerous 
dream and calls us on to the safety of another 
struggle. There a black cross looms above 
the way. We shrink and tremble. But the 
spirit calls, and we spread our hands for the 
sacrifice. On and on we go — more burdens, 
more temptations, more crosses! And through 
it all, what? A poor, worn-out, mutilated 
life 9 

No! But an ever increasing capacity, — 
wider visions, stronger powers, tenderer sym- 
pathies, better knowledge of ourselves, better 
knowledge of what life means, a quickening 
in the thrill and stir of holy war, and moments 
of spiritual exaltation, moments of divine peace, 
moments of conscious victory that are worth 



MAGIC WELLS 



17 



more than a million years among the flowers 
and sweetmeats of the dreamed-of Paradise. 

Let us be glad that this is a world whose 
angels are named Difficulty, Struggle, and Toil, 
and whose highways to worth are forever 
barred to indolence and folly. Let us be thank- 
ful that life, in its very nature, is a warfare of 
self with self, of light with darkness, of right 
with wrong. It is a great thing to have a 
moral nature, and it is a great cause in which 
to fight to make it fine and strong. 

Pray not, then, for magic waters of which 
to drink, pray not to have the burdens lifted 
and the way made smooth; but let us square 
ourselves to the conflict and pledge ourselves 
to the conquest of that which makes us mean, 
and to the redemption of that which makes 
us beautiful, strong, and true. 

And when the twilight gathers about us 
and through the deepening shadows we hear 
the challenge of "him who cometh in the name 
of the Lord," we shall not fear or falter, but, 
clad in the armor of a victorious life, we shall 
go forth to the conflict chanting the song of 
the brave: — 



18 



MAGIC WELLS 



"Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in visible form, 

Yet the strong man must go : 
For the journey is done and the summit attained, 

And the barriers fall, 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
forbore, 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave." 

Our Heavenly Father, Thy law is 
best for us. Teach us to adjust ourselves 
to it and to find through obedient service 
the riches of character and the wealth of 
the Spirit. Amen. 



JEREMIAH 
AND HUMAN NATURE 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE.* 



"The heart is deceitful above all things, and 
desperately wicked : who can know it?" — Jer. 
xvii. 9. 

THAT sounds like Jeremiah. It is Jeremiah. 
We expected it of him. His name has 
come down to us as the name of a man who 
saw black and who interpreted events in terms 
of disaster. So he has the unenviable honor 
of having contributed to our English speech 
a new word — " Jeremiad" — which signifies a 
wail of pessimism bursting out here and there 
into volcanic denunciation of everything in 
sight. 

It is true that the sour and somewhat 
sensational old prophet lived in a bad time. 
There was blood on the moon, the social eye 
was red, and when people were not chanting 
hymns of hate, they were singing songs of the 
wassail board. The bottom had dropped out 
of the world. That is what Jeremiah thought 
he saw. 

* Preached in November, 1921, prior to the Disarmament 
Conference at Washington, D.C. 

21 



22 



MAGIC WELLS 



I do not doubt that there was enough 
material in sight to justify a substantial Jere- 
miad, but that his wholesale indictment of 
human nature as fundamentally deceitful and 
desperately wicked was according to the facts, 
I very much question. Jeremiah had the 
pessimistic squint, and in addition his testi- 
mony is impaired by two other very serious 
weaknesses, — a prejudice against the defendant, 
and a reckless tongue. 

Tradition says he at last exhausted the 
tolerance of the people, fled the country with 
his forlorn disciples, and died an exile in Abys- 
sinia. But his spirit went marching on. It 
spread over the earth, and turned men into 
cynics, and philosophies into systems of de- 
spair. It got into Christian theology, called 
itself by the pretty name of " total depravity," 
and under that name it has wrung more tears 
from human eyes and put more terror into 
human hearts than any other single idea of 
mankind. Once in, it was a difficult idea to 
put out, for it was pinned down by one of 
those half-truths that have large staying power. 
For the past century or more we have been 
trying to get rid of it and secure a wider hearing 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 23 



for the other story, the story of human valor 
and virtue — and yet I suppose there are to-day 
wide areas of belief, in which is harbored a 
lurking suspicion that man is inherently bad 
and structurally a moral failure. 

The descendants of Jeremiah seem to have 
multiplied of late. The storm-cloud of passion 
that now hangs athwart the world and rains 
its vitriol on all beneath its shadow, is the mis- 
anthrope's opportunity. The conditions are 
so obviously bad, and reveal such depths of 
human frailty, that many people have lost 
their faith in the original soundness of the soul 
and are siding with Jeremiah in his belief that 
no one can fathom the " desperate wickedness" 
of the hidden man. 

Not far from Naples there is a plain-like 
field called the Sulfatara. To the casual ob- 
server it looks as innocent as a New England 
meadow. But walk upon it, and it sounds 
hollow beneath your feet; here and there sul- 
phurous vapors ooze through the pores of the 
soil, and you feel convinced that the judicious 
use of a stick of dynamite would smash a hole 
through the intervening crust and open up the 
infernal regions below. That is human nature 



24 



MAGIC WELLS 



to the modern Jeremiah. When a moral catas- 
trophe happens, when somebody goes wrong, 
when convention cracks and unpleasant vapors 
rise, he deliberately removes his cigar from his 
lips and sagely remarks: "I told you so. Your 
civilization is a sham. Your arts, your refine- 
ments, your scholarly culture, your religion 
and morals, are only skin-deep. Peel off the 
paint and see what you have left. Scratch 
your gentleman and a savage bleeds." 

It is refreshing to turn from the melancholy 
judgments of Jeremiah and listen to another 
old-time observer. Perhaps he was a con- 
temporary of the prophet and likewise saw 
the rivers red with blood and felt the shame 
of his own time. But he was a poet and had 
the poet's larger vision. He stood on the 
mount, and as they who poised in mid-air on 
the wings of the aeroplane see far into the 
ocean depths, so he from his lofty heights 
pierces through the surface events of the day 
and beholds the substance and the core of 
life. He writes his vision into a hymn of awe 
and w T onder. He does not mention the molten 
lava, the boiling mud, and the cinders of hell. 
He sings: "When I consider thy heavens, the 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 



25 



work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, 
which thou hast ordained; what is man, that 
thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, 
that thou visitest him? For thou hast made 
him a little lower than the angels, and hast 
crowned him with glory and honor." How the 
heart of every sane man leaps to confirm those 
splendid words! How the white stars rolling 
in their clean orbits, and the wind-swept fields 
with their flowers and golden grain, and every 
soul that has stood in awe and reverence before 
some other soul it has known and loved, — how 
they all answer in accord to that ancient 
apotheosis of divine creation! 

It is what we all believe with a holy fierce- 
ness. Civilization is not a sham. Culture is 
not rouge. Gentleness and good-will and love 
are not put on with a brush. You can varnish 
a board into lustrous beauty, but you can't 
varnish a human being into an angel. You 
must start with the angel-stuff in the grain 
and draw it out. That is what we have been 
doing for ten thousand — fifty thousand years. 
We have not been varnishing savages — we have 
been evolving angels out of savages, educating 
the primitive passions, developing the hidden 



26 



MAGIC WELLS 



resources of the spirit. Herbert Spencer says 
that nothing can be evolved that has not been 
previously involved. The oak is coiled up in 
the acorn. The potential lily-white petals, 
perfume, golden-dusted stamens, are all packed 
away in the rude bulb, waiting to be educated 
into bloom by sun and air and soil. 

Likewise within the savage lies the poten- 
tial gentleman. Smash a hole into his nature, 
break through the crust of his outward con- 
ditions, and you will find the germs of those 
qualities that bloomed to glory in Lincoln, in 
Shakespeare, and in Christ. "Scratch a gentle- 
man and the savage bleeds''? No! We invert 
the phrase, and with the whole beauty and 
majesty of creation behind us we say, "Scratch 
a savage and the gentleman bleeds." If that 
is not true — so true that it runs straight to. the 
heart of our Universe — then God dies amid 
the ruins of his own world, Christianity is 
fustian, evolution an empty word, and man a 
stupendous failure as a moral being. 

Here are these two theories of the essence 
of human nature. They stand over against 
each other like black and white. One says: 
The best you can do with a man is to dress 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 27 



him in broadcloth and fine linen and teach him 
the arts of manner. At heart he is a brute. 
The other says: The best you can do with a 
man is indeterminate. At heart is the seed 
of good; and in that live, eternal germ is the 
spiral spring of unguessed power and excellence. 

Which theory will you choose? 

Of course, your doubt, your confusion of 
mind, if you have any, lies in the fact that 
you know both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — 
and you know they are not two men, but one 
man. Sometimes a man is a savage and some- 
times he is a gentleman. Which was he in- 
tended to be as indicated by the prophetic 
symptoms of his natural instincts and his 
fundamental qualities? What will he become, 
if the best in him is allowed to grow and de- 
velop? That is the question back of all other 
questions. Which theory, then, will you choose, 
choose as a working theory, choose as the 
vital, dominant principle for the next thou- 
sand years? On which will you base your 
personal hopes and aspirations; on which will 
you found your civilization, your social insti- 
tutions, your philanthropies, your ethics, and 
your religion? 



28 



MAGIC WELLS 



Five years ago Germany made her 
choice. That war was the black flower of this 
doctrine that a gentleman can change his 
clothes and suddenly become a savage. The 
trenches that still gash the fair soil of or- 
chards and fields were made by the plow- 
share of the same theory; and within those 
blood-stained furrows sprang up the seed- 
idea that a man is not truly himself until his 
hands be dyed scarlet and the ecstasy of hatred 
control him. For forty or more years Teu- 
tonic Europe had been keeping school. In 
that school, cunning machines had been in- 
stalled for crushing the potential angels in 
the souls of young men. Somebody said, 
"You must/' and the young men — noble, splen- 
did fellows, who never dreamed that they were 
varnished savages — obeyed and went to school. 
They were festooned with brass cartridges, 
and the skull and crossbones were painted on 
their visors, and then the crushing machines 
were applied to the angels, and the angels 
perished. Then a book of instructions was 
placed in the hands of the young men, in which 
they were told: "In your campaigns of slaugh- 
ter (for it is that for which you have been 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 29 



educated), act like savages; even the thin 
chivalry of war is forbidden. Be altogether 
frightful, and let no sound be heard but the 
death-cry of your victims and the crackle of 
burning houses!" Is it any wonder, after all 
that, that the young men believed that they 
were capable of the worst, and in the horror of 
their deeds even surpassed the expectations of 
the onlooking Jeremiah? 

" Somewhere in Northern France at the 
bottom of a shell-crater, two cold, dead sol- 
diers — a German and a Frenchman — were 
found lying in a long death-grapple under the 
starlit sky. There they lay, face to face, star- 
ing into each other's sightless eyes, like two 
strange statues of their own hate — grim effi- 
gies of their own fear and despair about them- 
selves and about each other; and when they 
were buried, their dead fingers had to be pried 
away from each other's throats." Were those 
men as totally depraved as the ghastly spec- 
tacle showed? Had a mere difference of opin- 
ion cracked the crust of art and let loose the 
volcanic fires beneath? Were they, at last, 
themselves — really themselves, as their clenched 
hands wrung the life from each other's hearts? 



30 



MAGIC WELLS 



Rather, were they not more themselves two 
years before, when they met, it may be, as 
neighbors, and then separated in kindly feel- 
ing and good-will? Why, then, that scene in 
the shell-pit? Because they had been to school 
in the trenches. Because they imbibed there 
the doctrine of the guns. Because they had 
caught the fever, the madness, the delirium of 
hate, and believed, as they had been taught, 
that might makes right and the tiger is caged 
in every man's breast. 

" Scratch the gentleman and a savage 
bleeds." That is the theory that lay in the 
dim background of this war and subtly fed its 
poison into the veins of every new recruit and 
nourished the madness of every fighting bat- 
talion. You say that is exaggeration. I do 
not doubt it. I grant that where the guns 
were not heard, yes, even where their hot 
breath was most keenly felt, there were multi- 
tudes inspired by high motives and in whom 
the spirit's pride was not dead. But I submit 
that the whole thrust and insidious influence of 
this teaching of blood and carnage is to edu- 
cate men out of their minds and deceive them 
into believing that the bare beast is the no- 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 31 

Blest work of God. It is the Krupp theory of 
human nature. It is the machine-gun doc- 
trine of the soul. It is the jungle interpreta- 
tion of human society. 

Once more we are about to challenge that 
interpretation. Once more we are about to 
ask ourselves whether civilized human beings 
can live together without periodically relaps- 
ing to their worst and lowest estate. 

Hard by the marble mausoleum where 
sleeps the unknown soldier, type of the sac- 
rifice which war exacted, — hard by that na- 
tional sanctuary, will meet, in coming days, 
great citizens from all over the world. They 
come to deliberate on what? Finance? com- 
merce? science? education? No, but the trust- 
worthiness of mankind, the moral soundness 
of human nature. Can the nations of the 
world throw down their arms and in their 
peaceful nakedness trust one another? 

It is suspicion that holds people apart. It 
is distrust that forges cannon and builds for- 
tresses. It is social disbelief that makes the 
world an armed camp. Can the human soul 
stand the test of the unweaponed hand? That 
is the question that is being asked now as it 



32 



MAGIC WELLS 



was never asked before, under the lengthened 
shadows of a world mourning for its first-born. 

We know not what answer shall come; but 
can we not fervently believe that the world will 
not be where it was before, that after the last 
tragic experience, it will make it impossible 
ever to happen again? 

We must not be too sanguine, we must not 
expect the tradition of the ages to be over- 
turned in an hour ; but we have the reasonable 
right to expect and demand that some prac- 
tical step shall be taken toward assuring the 
permanency of a world peace. And America 
is all ready to stand foremost in making that 
expectation a happy reality. She now has the 
prestige and the power. I believe she will speak 
and act out of the deep sincerity of her dem- 
ocratic soul, for democracy is only another 
name for faith in the sanity and worthiness 
of human nature. I believe that, even while 
we laugh and dance and jingle our money, we 
are yet the greatest idealists on the globe. I 
believe, when the hour strikes, we shall break 
through our superficial levity, greed, and selfish 
provincialism, and reveal what we are. We 
shall come forth in our health and youthful 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 33 



vision and sound a new note in behalf of the 
human soul, — a note solemn as worship and 
far-reaching as the shot at Concord bridge, — 
a note that shall abash the war lords of the 
earth and silence the tongue of every Jeremiah. 
What note? The note of our national religion, — 
the democratic creed that underlies all our 
motley sectarianism and social vagaries, — the 
conviction, needless of Holy Writ, because it 
is bedded in the eternal truths of conscious- 
ness, — the conviction that a human soul is 
primarily sound at the center, and that human 
nature, spite of all its meanness and sordid- 
ness, roots back in the cosmic goodness of some 
divine ideal and can be trusted. 

In yonder tower, among its larger brethren, 
hangs a little bell weighing only six hundred 
and fifty pounds. It is called C-sharp in musical 
speech. On its brazen bowl is inscribed, "I cry 
the eternal progress of mankind." Six years 
ago we dedicated it to that great proclama- 
tion, and as we waited, it broke the solemn 
silence of this space with its eager and confi- 
dent response. 

And as you came to worship this morning, 
doubtless you heard its voice mingled with the 



34 



MAGIC WELLS 



voices of its fellows in some noble hymn, and 
yet amid the clamor of tongues, singing its 
own particular theme, "I cry the eternal prog- 
ress of mankind," — a cry, not of surmise or 
hope or even prayer, but a cry of profound 
assurance. On what is that assurance founded? 
On the Eternal, Infinite, Absolute Good, out 
of whose spirit every human spirit is born. 

Progress? Yes, eternal progress, progress 
without end, climbing with faltering feet the 
steps of "that great altar stair that slopes 
through darkness up to God" — onward through 
the vast, uncharted realms of being — on- 
ward and upward forever! That is the creed 
of American Democracy. That creed we will 
teach our boys and girls. On that creed we 
will build our temples. By that creed we will 
shape and guide our civilization. And the time 
shall come, when the elder nations shall no 
longer taunt us with our materialistic temper, 
but shall discover that here in the western 
world, with its mingled races, has come a renais- 
sance of the spirit of man and has been created 
a congenial home for the highest idealism which 
the world has ever seen. That prophecy for 
America is not fanciful, but is commensurate 



JEREMIAH AND HUMAN NATURE 35 



with our thought of man and his dignity as a 
son of God and as a citizen of this majestic 
and splendid Universe. 

Our Heavenly Father, we are proud 
of our citizenship in Thy Universe and 
uplifted with the joy of believing that we 
are the children of the spirit. Inspired 
by that belief, we go forth to life, to love, 
to toil, to service for Thee and our 
fellow-men. Amen. 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 



"Thou shalt surely give, and thine heart shall 
not be grieved when thou givest." — Deut. 
xv. 10. 

LIBERALITY without grief! Generosity 
without regret! Giving without being 
sorry that the opportunity asked you! That, 
you will observe, is the very essence of the 
charitable spirit. It follows the gift back to 
where it is rooted in the impulses of the heart. 
The thought was put into words some twenty- 
five hundred years ago, by a discerning priest 
of the Jewish temple. Between that day and 
our service this morning, many things have 
happened. 

The interval is filled with marvelous changes 
in human affairs, human motives, human ex- 
pressions of thought and feeling. There are 
wrecked empires, dead philosophies, exhausted 
ideas, worn-out inventions. New institutions, 
new devices, new theories have come to take 
their place. We see now an earth and a heaven 
beyond the dreams of Columbus and Coper- 

39 



40 



MAGIC WELLS 



nicus. We see a printing-press, a steam- 
engine, a flying-machine, a wireless telegraphy, 
and now to our bewildered gaze there has been 
unrolled the picture of the whole world ap- 
parently trying to exterminate itself by the 
power of its own creations. 

But there is something else to see. Among 
the great visible changes humanity has under- 
gone, is the enormous development of the in- 
stinct of helpfulness and the discriminating ap- 
plication of its benevolence. 

In ancient times there were munificent 
givers, but they stand isolated from the mul- 
titude and seem to be posing for public applause. 
There was a lavish outflow of wealth, but it 
was directed into amusements for the plebeian 
crowd. Rome built huge amphitheaters, that 
the rabble might delight in scenes of blood, 
and unloaded cargoes of Egyptian corn in her 
streets to appease the wolf-like fury of the 
hungry mob. 

But to-day the tide of beneficence flows to 
deeper purpose. It sets toward education, 
toward social justice, toward the enlargement 
of opportunity, toward the promotion of citi- 
zenship, toward the safeguarding of life, liberty 
and political ideals. 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 



41 



Moreover we do not have to point to Ram- 
eses the magnificent, or Herod the temple- 
builder, or Nero the imperial showman, as the 
only examples of generous giving. We may, 
indeed, be dazzled for the moment by the 
glittering bulk of some offering of a modern 
Crcesus, but the second thought clears our 
vision to see the ten thousand hands of the 
multitude bearing gifts likewise. The glory 
of our time, the light that pierces the tragic 
clouds of these days, is not the brilliant 
generosity of the few, but the open-handed 
liberality of the masses. 

The most astonishing phase of modern life, 
I think, is the vast army of causes and insti- 
tutions dependent upon public generosity for 
their support. And now has come the dev- 
astation of a great war, with a fresh group 
of appeals uttering the same cry to every loyal 
citizen. And when you probe these causes 
and these appeals to the center, you find that 
every one is captained, not by personal self- 
ishness or ambition, but by the idealistic motive 
of human welfare and the betterment of the 
world. 

History has no record of anything like it. 



42 



MAGIC WELLS 



It is a modern and rapidly growing emphasis 
on the fundamental law of mutual aid — the 
right of the weak to ask the strength of the 
strong and the duty of the strong to stoop to 
the need of the weak. It is Christ's work of 
neighborly thought and care, grown big and 
visualized into civic responsibility. 

That is the large fact that rings every man's 
doorbell to-day. He is expected to get up and 
open the door without reluctance and with- 
out grief. He must or become dehumanized. 
For the air is full of life-lines with saving dol- 
lars attached. The spirit of the time is ring- 
ing its calls from every tower and steeple. 
The empty hands of need are stretched in 
rows every day across his office desk. 

Perad venture he asks: "Why? Why should 
I economize; why should I diminish my priv- 
ileges and pleasures; why should I obey so- 
ciety's demand to surrender my own?" 

If he has any warm blood in his heart and 
any thought in his brain, he will get the answer. 
He will learn that nineteen-twentieths of what 
he is has been given to him by others. He 
will learn that the weaker half becomes a 
dangerous half when neglected too long. He 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 



43 



will learn the solemn significance of such 
things as social obligations. He will learn 
that he who takes all and offers nothing be- 
comes himself a moral pauper. He will 
learn, moreover, that help withheld, when 
freedom is in jeopardy, is a contribution 
to oppression and misrule. He will learn 
that help withheld, when humanity screams 
with pain, is an invitation to barbarism and 
moral degeneracy. 

So we must face the fact. Giving is a part 
of the program. It is there and has a right to 
be there so long as the drama, as at present con- 
stituted, holds the stage. 

The obligations of citizenship do not end 
with the tax receipt. A man is tempted to 
think so in these times, but after he has filed 
that document away with mingled feelings of 
satisfaction and resentment, civilized society 
calls upon him and presents a subscription 
paper. He must not be surprised. He must 
not indignantly declare that he has already 
paid his dues, because he hasn't. He must 
make up his mind that it is inevitable, that 
it is a part of the daily experience of 
living like a gentleman, — one of the neces- 



44 



MAGIC WELLS 



sary overhead expenses of being alive in a 
populated world. 

Here, then, is a great, unending petition 
unrolling, — sometimes slowly, — sometimes, as 
to-day, with bewildering speed, — unrolling di- 
rectly beneath the eyes of the individual man! 
What, let us ask, may be his reaction to that 
unrolling appeal? 

He may in the first place refuse to have any- 
thing to do with it. He says: "Why should I 
consider these causes? Life is my own affair, 
and all I get I intend to keep. If men will get 
born, let them take the chances with the 
rest of us. If trouble comes, I shall need all 
I have, to safeguard my own interests." 

We need not classify such a person. We 
are too far away from the tooth-and-claw 
struggle of jungle days to understand him. 

Now and then such a man appears and per- 
haps becomes rich, but when the sods are neatly 
placed over his grave, it is a joy to see his 
heirs distribute the possessions he could not 
take with him. We need not take him into 
consideration, for there is not enough of him 
to make a type. 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 



45 



Again, the man may meet the appeal with 
some favor, because of his respect for public 
opinion. 

He may not care for the betterment of any 
world outside of his own personal enclosures, 
but he does care whether or not his neighbors 
think him mean and selfish. And so he asks 
what others are giving. He desires to be in 
good company! 

Such a person is always a beautiful psy- 
chological study. It is very interesting to see 
his satisfaction over some narrow escape from 
doing too much, and to observe the nu- 
merous little self-deceptions which he employs, 
to make himself believe that he is not half so 
small as he suspects himself to be. 

Of course this is not generosity. It is not 
even intelligent giving. It is simply paying 
the lowest market price for public approval. 

Here again we are dealing very largely with 
a mythical person — or at least let us hope so. 
Human nature is never so bad as a pulpit sup- 
position can make it. 

There is another attitude which may be 
taken. It is still one of indifference, but it 



46 



MAGIC WELLS 



is an indifference which has been artificially 
created. The man is generous by nature, but 
circumstances have encased him in an Egyptian 
coffin. You rap on the painted casket and 
ask for help, and out reaches a big hand piled 
to the finger-tips with gold. And that is all! 
You get what you ask for, but it is given simply 
because you ask for it. It is an automatic 
kind of benevolence resulting from too much 
isolation from the troubled areas of the world. 

It is interesting — sometimes pitiful — to see 
how some people become alienated from the 
philanthropic side of life. A large, generous 
nature may become so absorbed in its own 
affairs, become so walled in by its own prosper- 
ity, become so deafened by the hallelujah chorus 
of its own success, that it does not hear "the 
low sad music of humanity," or realize that 
not far away are great spaces of fife crying for 
the presence of the strong. And when such 
a nature becomes thus detached from the 
actual world, the fluid sympathies recede 
beneath the surface, like springs in time of 
drought. You can always get water by dig- 
ging for it, but it never bubbles up and out of 
its own accord. 

If I had the management of human affairs, 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 47 



I would condemn every prosperous man to 
one month of poverty every year, in order to 
keep his memory fresh and true. I would 
condemn every complaining slacker to go 
about with the contribution-box, so as to give 
him the viewpoint of those who manage that 
unpopular instrument of public service. It 
might, indeed, be a wholesome experience for 
us all now and then to exchange places. It 
would certainly clear up many misunder- 
standings, revive the corpse of some people's 
enthusiasm, and furnish every one with some 
liberalizing information. 

Of course I am thinking only of the me- 
chanical nature of this kind of giving. You 
cannot call such people penurious or flint- 
hearted. They are kindly responsive, but 
their imagination is so inelastic that it cannot 
span the distance between their pockets and 
the sources of need, without artificial assistance. 
They give, often very goodnaturedly, large, 
bulky dollars, and yet they have given only 
stark, metallic symbols, unclothed with human 
interest and personal feeling. 

It is only a short step from the automatic 
giver to the spontaneous giver. They are 



48 



MAGIC WELLS 



really very much alike, except in one point, 
and that is the initial impulse. The automa- 
ton must be wound up regularly by some 
power outside of itself, whereas the spontane- 
ous giver is actuated by a living, perennial force 
from within. 

And here we come to the ideal attitude 
toward the appeal. It is the attitude of in- 
telligent welcome, of sincere and lively interest. 
It is the temper which inspires the man to say 
to himself: "I am glad of the opportunity to 
help. I will give something of my time to 
know what the need is. I will give something 
of my own mental and moral vitality, some- 
thing, if need be, of self-denial and personal 
surrender." 

And so he takes his gift (we do not count 
it — we do not need to) and, wrapping it up in 
that something of intelligence and that some- 
thing of vital interest and that something of 
self-sacrifice, he gives to the waiting want of 
the world. You see it is not the generosity of 
a machine. It is not a grieving submission to 
a philanthropic necessity. It is rather the 
active eagerness to pull on the load up to the 
personal limit of strength. 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 



49 



"Pulling on the load to the limit of personal 
strength" — and pulling with eagerness and con- 
secration! There you uncover the warm soul 
of benevolence! It is no longer a question of 
size or power or amount, but of desire and 
effort . Do you give all you can, and do you 
give it with gladness and good- will? That is 
the true measure of the generous gift. And 
here the open-handed millionaire and the poor 
man who eagerly "does his bit" stand on pre- 
cisely the same footing. The efforts of both 
are of the same dimensions. And the poor 
man is not ashamed because he gives so little. 
He may be sorry, but he is not ashamed. Pov- 
erty is not a disgrace. It is only an incon- 
venience. It has nothing whatever to do with 
the spirit of benevolence. 

And may I say that very often the work of 
the world gets done, not through the munifi- 
cence of large givers, but through the shower- 
ing drops that fall from the cloudlike multi- 
tude of common people. 

We witnessed that truth during the late 
war. The Nation issued its Liberty Bonds, and 
the unnamed masses "carried on" to over- 
subscription. The Red Cross Society made its 



50 



MAGIC WELLS 



appeal, the Y. M. C. A. asked for fabulous sums, 
and numerous other causes called to the war- 
roused people; and the flooding sympathy of 
man, woman, and child coined itself into hard 
money sanctified by millions of generous im- 
pulses. The stress of the times has disclosed 
the latent resources of the common people and, 
what is still more significant, the regal strength 
of results when those who can do little do it 
proudly and willingly. It is, then, not the 
size of the offering that counts as generosity, 
but the ratio it bears to the power to give. 

That is what Jesus saw in the woman's con- 
tribution, as described in the Bible story. It 
stands there as a perpetual rebuke to those who 
do nothing because they cannot do much. 

But here we encounter a warning: " Judge 
not." In this matter of giving we do a great 
deal of judging of other people's capacity and 
liberality. 

It is a very great temptation to make a 
quick estimate of a neighbor's income and then 
give it away for him in most bountiful fashion. 
And very likely he is doing the same for us. 
This may serve very well as a game of amuse- 
ment, but it becomes a serious matter when 



GIVING WITHOUT GRIEVING 51 



public judgments are based upon it. Many 
a brutal opinion has sprung from an idle guess. 
The world does not know half of what it pre- 
tends to know. You saw that Bible picture of 
a procession of givers filing past the brazen 
boxes in the temple. Do not think for an in- 
stant that they were the only generous people 
in Jerusalem that morning. I saw and you 
saw several thousand others back in the homes 
and in the streets and in the vineyards, min- 
istering to their own poor, and giving to noble 
causes, that were not listed in the temple cal- 
endar. Peter and Judas and James may have 
wondered where those people were and may 
have censured them for not being in the morn- 
ing procession, but you and I are wiser by 
twenty centuries than those three men; there- 
fore we will judge not. 

Our Heavenly Father, Thy law binds 
up our life with the life of the world — 
our happiness with the happiness of all 
mankind. Let us learn this great truth 
and give ourselves generously and lov- 
ingly to that service for one another, 
which is the truest service for Thee. 
Amen. 



SPIRITUAL NERVE AND 
CIRCUMSTANCES 



SPIRITUAL NERVE AND CIRCUM- 



STANCES 

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil." — Psalm 
xxiii. 

THE power of the human soul to remain 
calm and unafraid amid all the shifting cir- 
cumstances of the environing world! The 
human spirit possesses just that power, — the 
power to preserve its own health, the power to 
hold itself steady and true to the normal stand- 
ard, the power, not to dictate or control cir- 
cumstances, but to guard itself from being over- 
whelmed and destroyed by circumstances. 

The physical processes of the body are 
largely automatic. You do not have to practice 
digestion. You do not have to adjust your tem- 
perature, or think about your arterial system. 
It takes care of itself. Nature wound you up 
like a clock, locked the door and threw away 
the key, so that you might not meddle with 
the machinery. 

But the spiritual system is not automatic. 

55 



56 



MAGIC WELLS 



It is not controlled by a nerve and a muscle, 
but by a conscious thought. You have to 
practice serenity. You have to think about 
courage. You have to brace yourself with 
stout resolve to withstand "the slings and 
arrows of outrageous fortune." And that is 
the glory of spiritual constancy. The very 
fact that it is not automatic, that it is a con- 
dition of your own choice and your own crea- 
tion, — it is that fact that lifts it out of the 
category of mere instinctive action and distin- 
guishes it with moral significance. 

What makes a moral being? Is it cor- 
rectness? Is it mechanical obedience to law? 
Is it the servile following of a straight line as 
the iron wheel runs in the prepared groove? 
Then the stars are moral, and the snowflake is 
moral, and the withered leaf drifting down the 
street before the gusty wind. It is the power 
to choose that makes a moral being. Here I 
stand at the junction of two roads — stand with 
open eyes and thinking mind. One road leads 
toward sin and the other leads toward right- 
eousness. There is no power in heaven or 
earth that can prevent me from choosing the 
road I desire. That is my inalienable right. 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



And it is that freedon of choice that constitutes 
one of the essential factors of moral action. 

Likewise the power of fortifying the soul 
against the invasion of circumstances is one of 
the great spiritual distinctions of man, because 
it is a matter of choice — because he can say to 
himself: "I will not be a coward. I will not 
surrender. I will not be the puppet of things 
and outward conditions." And straightway 
the soul falls into order, and fear dies, and 
courage stands at the gate, straight and calm 
as a sentinel. Is that possible? Not only pos- 
sible, but absolutely certain. Every man is 
potentially a spiritual giant. He never knows 
what reserve he has until he takes command. 
When Roderick Dhu blew a blast upon his 
horn, the heathered moors, so tame and flat, 
suddenly sprang up into an army of valiant 
clansmen. It needs but the bugle call of the 
will, it needs but the staccato order to "fall in," 
and suddenly the dormant powers of the soul 
rise up to defend its peace. 

But the timid plead "temperament." They 
say that this spiritual equilibrium is a matter 
of inheritance. One man gives a brave, 
smooth front to life's vicissitudes, because he 



58 



MAGIC WELLS 



is born that way. Another is but a jelly-fish 
on the wave-beaten shore, because he was in- 
tended to be only a human jelly-fish. That is 
a pusillanimous confession to make. And it 
is not true. It may be that "one star differeth 
from another star in glory, " but every star is a 
star, born in the same cosmic vortex and cre- 
ated out of the same stellar ingredients. 

We sometimes speak of environment and 
heredity as if they were the equivalents of the 
old Greek Destiny that even pulled the strings 
which actuated the hands of the Olympian 
gods, but there is no destiny except what a 
man creates for himself. A man's fate does 
not reside in Olympus, where Zeus hands down 
to him weal or woe, light or darkness. It is more 
intimate than that and far more personal. 
His fate is the decision of his own will. It is 
for him to say whether he shall conquer the 
world or the world shall conquer him. And 
heredity — it is not some despotic, irresistible 
power that picks a man up and flings him into 
heaven or pitches him into hell. It is simply 
one form of environment, — an environment 
of temperament, a spiritual companionship 
of disposition, of desires and hungers; a com- 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



59 



panionship of tendencies toward cowardice or 
courage, toward evil or good; and a man is 
expected to meet them just as he would meet 
any other circumstance — with the commanding 
will. If they are good, he is asked to 
follow their leading. If they are bad, he is 
asked to subdue them and make them fol- 
low him. Adverse circumstances are only the 
whetstones of character. Our timid man with 
his temperament has in him all the possibilities 
of a hero, if he only thought so, if he only 
could make up his mind to be one; but he 
will never do either so long as he drugs his 
conscience and softens his will by laying the 
responsibility of his weakness upon the graves 
of his dead ancestors. 

Life presents itself to every man in a great 
variety of aspects. It is like the weather. You 
can never tell what it is going to be. Some- 
times it is a June day with the perfume of roses, 
and sometimes it is as hard and bitter as an 
icy blast from the North. One day the path 
is smooth as a marble floor, and another day 
it is choked with thickets of brier and thorn. 
That is what every soul encounters all along 
the journey of life. It is what we call the cir- 



60 



MAGIC WELLS 



cumstances of time — the capricious, ever-chang- 
ing climate of the spirit. 

What are we going to do about it? We 
cannot regulate the conditions. That would 
mean regulating the solar system and a billion 
and a half human beings to suit our daily desire. 
What is better, then, than to face squarely into 
the current of events, be they warm or cold, 
bitter or sweet, and carry our own climate 
with us? — that is to say, to have the spirit 
within us so regulated, so safely adjusted, that 
it shall not be thrown out of gear or disordered 
by the heat or cold of daily experience? 

The important thing in life is not what comes 
to us, but the attitude of mind in which we 
receive what comes. If every trouble sinks 
straight to the heart of personality, if every 
wind that blows shakes our house to its founda- 
tions, then indeed we have lost our independ- 
ence and are slaves to every caprice of fortune. 
But if we can meet life as the oasis meets the 
desert with its barrier of palms and its fountain 
of living water at the center, if we can calmly 
and defiantly say to the vexations of the world, 
"Thus far shalt thou come and no farther," 
we are free sons of God, and possess the abun- 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



(31 



dant life. It is this — this firm determination 
not to be frightened, this quiet resolve not to be 
disturbed or dethroned — that arms us against 
circumstances and protects our moral dignity. 

Temptation comes and lays its allurements 
at our feet. That is an attention which every 
man receives from the surrounding world. It 
tries to poison the sources of life. It offers an 
attractive program and promises great rewards. 
It strives to unsettle his constancy and weaken 
his loyalty to the ideal. It is circumstance 
in the dress coat of expediency and wearing 
the mask of plausibility. It is the supreme 
test of character. No man need be ashamed 
of having that test applied. No man need be 
ashamed of a visit from temptation. It proves 
that he is worth undoing. It is a compliment 
which the devil pays to his virtues. But when 
temptation comes, what then? 

In my boyhood I was told to flee temptation. 
When I saw it approaching, I was to run as fast 
as I could in the opposite direction. That is 
one way. But it is the coward's way. It is 
the way of the man who is afraid, the man who 
cannot trust himself on the battle-line. To run 



62 



MAGIC WELLS 



away from one temptation is to run into another 
one — there are so many of them. And so the 
virtuous soul is always on the run, and enjoys 
no rest or peace. 

There is a better way, and that is the way 
of walking straight through temptation. It is 
to have such a firm grip on principles, such 
confidence in the integrity of the spirit, such 
independence and pride of soul, that you have 
lost all fear, and pass through temptation with 
contemptuous ease. In John Bunyan's im- 
mortal allegory, the Pilgrim is seen approach- 
ing a narrow way where two Hons are roaring 
and plunging in ferocious rage. His first im- 
pulse is to run away, and then the voice of the 
spirit reassures him, and, plucking up courage, 
he goes forward, only to discover at the critical 
moment that the lions are chained — and he 
passes between them unharmed. That is the 
parable for the tempted man. The best pro- 
tection against temptation is not the magical 
seven-league boots, but a spiritual composure 
that fits like an armor over the soul. 

The world, moreover, sends its vexations 
and disappointments, its successes and vie- 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



63 



tories. Living is like traveling. You have to 
change cars and put up at a variety of hotels. 
You encounter all sorts of officials, and your 
experiences run all the way from glory to hu- 
miliation. One day is a day of inspiration, and 
another is full of trial and exasperation. 

He is a good traveler who takes things as 
they come and preserves his serenity whole. 
That is the way of life. You have your de- 
feats and you have your victories. Both are 
tests of your moral poise. They represent the 
freezing and the boiling points of outward con- 
ditions. It is difficult to say which is the more 
disconcerting to the undisciplined soul. Some 
characters die at 32° and others perish long be- 
fore they reach 212°. Some people fly to 
pieces, like a Prince Rupert drop, when the tip 
of their superficial life happens to be broken 
off. Some people, on the other hand, lose 
their balance and fall from their thrones as soon 
as prosperity has crowned their brows. The 
chill of adversity or the warmth of good fortune 
has got inside and deranged the normal tem- 
perature of the spirit. 

How little the good traveler is affected by 
these things! He is the business man, or the 



64 



MAGIC WELLS 



professional man. He is the preacher, or the 
teacher, or the carpenter at the bench. Or 
he bakes bread and serves at the table. Each 
is traveling around his own world, and that 
world is full of all sorts of moral weather. He 
has prepared himself for the worst and the 
best. He is not of any superior order of being. 
He is superior only in this respect, that he is 
determined not to lose his life by trying too 
anxiously to find it. He will be king in his 
own private kingdom, and no external sur- 
prise of circumstances good or ill shall turn 
his head or disrupt his peace. And he wins — 
wins the consciousness of supreme manhood, 
wins the prize of life, which is more life. He 
is victor, though his sword be broken at the 
hilt, and his hands be tied behind his back. 
And he is no more a victor, though his out- 
stretched palms be filled with treasure, and a 
multitude of his fellow-men be prostrate at his 
feet. 

Then life applies another group of tests. 
It would seem as if it were a kind of inquisi- 
tion trying to make a man's soul cry out and 
confess to fear and cowardice. It flings him 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



65 



on the rack and distorts him with pain. It 
mixes his cup with the toxin of old age, and 
his hair whitens and his hand trembles. It 
draws aside a curtain and in the dim light he 
sees the dead face of his best friend. Now 
surrender, curse God, and die! No, not if he 
is the brave, sane man. 

These wounds run deep, but they must not 
stab to the core of character. They are part 
of the program, and, tragic though they be, 
they cannot be so tragic as a lost trust in God 
and a soul dead with cynicism. They are in- 
evitable. If a man lives long enough, he must 
go on the rack of pain, he must taste the cup 
of infirmity, he must walk in the way of the 
mourner. But the valiant pilgrim meets these 
experiences, not with the stoic's unconcern, 
but with a heart, chastened and saddened it 
may be, yet wondrously warm with beautiful 
memories, great hopes, and the unruffled as- 
surance that neither life nor death, nor things 
present nor things to come, can ever separate 
him from the eternal goodness at the center of 
things. "Yea, though I walk through the val- 
ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." 
Sometimes that confident note sounds like the 



66 



MAGIC WELLS 



cry of one who believed he was the special 
favorite of Heaven, and carried the signet ring 
of Omnipotence. But it is not that. It is 
simply the voice of the good traveler, who, in 
a far-away time, wandered among the hills and 
vales of Palestine, met temptation, trouble, and 
pain, and yet felt the brooding good- will of the 
Great Shepherd, believed in His universe, and 
was not afraid. 

Let us go back to the world with that 
triumph psalm singing in our hearts. There 
will be disappointment, suffering, and loss. 
There will be joy, success, and victory. There 
will be temptations, seeking the heart of youth, 
knocking at the doors of mid-life, besetting 
even old age in the twilight hours. We will 
front them all with whole hearts. We will 
not be demoralized by victory. We will not 
be ruined by defeat. We will go our way 
among all these things, keeping our moral 
dignity, calm amid the storm, undismayed in 
the shadow of the night. To confess even to 
ourselves that we are creatures of circumstance 
is the unconditional surrender of the strong- 
hold of the spirit. 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



67 



We will not confess that, and we will not 
surrender. 

"Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

"In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

"Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

"It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate: 
I am the captain of my soul." 

That is the poet Henley throwing down the 
gauntlet to the universe. With clenched fist, 
and blood streaming from his bruised head, he 
stands alone and challenges Fate to do its worst. 
"Come on," he cries, "you black messengers 
of the pit, strike again, crush me where I 



68 



MAGIC WELLS 



stand, beat to the dust my upheld defences; 
but I will fight on to the last breath, and defy 
you with an unconquered spirit." That is a 
stirring picture, — the picture of a magnificent 
fight, a titanic man blindly, brutely, vin- 
dictively squared against the onrushing charge 
of wrathful circumstances. It is the wounded 
lion at bay, roaring defiance as he claws the 
lance that has pierced his breast. It is thrill- 
ing, but it is pagan: it is inspiring, but it is 
gladiatorial. It means nothing but a raw, 
fierce struggle on the sands of the world's 
arena. 

Another poet shall come. He shall like- 
wise celebrate the unflinching courage of man, 
he shall also image the bludgeoning of cir- 
cumstance and the bleeding, unbowed head; 
but over and above it all, and through it all, 
shall run the commanding strain of the vast 
friendliness of the universe, the redeeming and 
chastening power of adversity, and a call to 
that fearlessness of spirit which is higher than 
spiritual obstinacy, even that sanity of soul and 
composure of mind which are born of a con- 
sciousness of the close-approaching and over- 
brooding presence of God. 



SPIRITUAL NERVE 



69 



The first notes of that song were struck ages 
ago. Listen once more: "Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod 
and thy staff they comfort me. . . . Surely 
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days 
of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the 
Lord for ever." 

Our Heavenly Father, it matters not 
how strait the gate, how charged with 
punishments the scroll. We thank Thee 
that Thou hast given us power to over- 
come and strength to conquer. Teach 
us to use these gifts of the spirit with that 
dignity and courage that becomes those 
born of the Spirit. Amen. 



WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED 
TO-DAY?" 



'WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED 
TO-DAY?" 



"Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" — Ruth 
ii. 19. 

IN Millet's picture of "The Gleaners/' we see 
the distant village, the rounded stacks of 
grain, and the clumsy carts laden with the 
yellow sheaves, — all bathed and glorified in 
the mellow light of the evening sun, while in the 
foreground are the rough-clad figures of three 
peasant women, raking the stubble with clutch- 
ing fingers, and greedily gathering the scattered 
straws which the reapers have left behind. 

Whatever motive the artist may have had, 
whatever lesson the canvas may teach, how- 
ever beautiful the color or skilful the com- 
position, those bending forms and stolid faces 
are still in the foreground, telling the story 
of grinding toil and sodden poverty, of stupid 
minds and dull days and aspirations that fall 
asleep when the body's hunger and thirst are 
satisfied. 

73 



74 



MAGIC WELLS 



And when the twilight falls and they return 
to their cheerless homes, if they were asked 
where they had been gleaning, the question 
would kindle no thought in their simple minds, 
beyond the bare field where they had gathered 
their scant and ragged sheaves. 

Or go back to Palestine, where was enacted 
that charming little drama of the harvest days 
as depicted in the Book of Ruth, from which 
our text is taken. The brilliant sunlight, the 
vine-clad hills, the waving grain, the piled-up 
sheaves, the threshing-floor, the hissing sickles 
in the reapers' hands, and the timid maidens 
afar off — gleaning as they go. 

And when the evening shadows come, the 
maid of Moab homeward goes, singing a song 
of gladness for the bounty her hands have 
won. And at the open door the simple ques- 
tion greets her, "Where hast thou gleaned 
to-day?" And her answer is just as simple, 
just what we should expect it would be, — 
revealing only her interest in the abundance 
she had found, and telling her joy and pride 
because now there is bread for the hunger at 
the fireside. 

But ask that same question here this morn- 



•'WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 



75 



ing and gone is the vision of harvest fields and 
singing reapers. It awakes a new train of 
ideas. It flings a new set of associations upon 
the screen. No longer are we watching the 
rude peasants in the fields of France, or listen- 
ing to the voice of Ruth at her mother's door, 
but we are alone with our own memories, we 
are reviewing the events and experiences of 
yesterday, we are looking into our own souls 
and wondering what answer we shall give, 
what things have claimed our interest, what 
gleanings of value we are bringing home at 
the close of day. 

For the mind confesses that the image is 
true. 

The world is indeed a vast field, where 
seedtime and harvest are forever mingled 
together; seeds of good or evil, of joy or pain, 
falling constantly into the open furrows; 
ripened sheaves of virtue or folly, of pride or 
shame, of peace or despair, ever being bound 
up by the hands of the reapers, — regions where 
the air is heavy with the vapors of sin and 
cruelty and moral misery, — regions where the 
sun shines, and character is sweet, and rest for 
the heart abounds. 



76 



MAGIC WELLS 



What a strange, incongruous scene it is, — 
this motley multitude of human beings swarm- 
ing over the field, working or idling, helping 
or hurting, saving or destroying, making 
themselves noble or mean, gathering the chaff 
or gathering the wheat, winning the treasures 
of the enlarged life or dying of mental and 
moral starvation in the midst of abundance! 

Into this field you and I are born. We 
come with the dignity of noble birth. We 
come with the gifts of infinite capacity. We 
come with hearts innocent and clean, with 
aspirations sweet as an angel's dream, with 
powers waiting to be made virile and strong, 
waiting to be dedicated to the high emprise 
of improving the world and winning the things 
that cannot perish. 

And freedom is given to us — freedom to 
walk the earth and choose the things we are 
to do — freedom to give our strength to folly 
or to wisdom — freedom to make ourselves 
cheap and tawdry or worthy and beautiful — 
freedom to weave the darkness into garments 
of shame or to wear the sunlight robes of the 
true and honest life. 

And a day is given to us in which to choose, 



"WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 77 

in which to think our thoughts and speak our 
words and do our work. Only a day! For 
yesterday is gone and to-morrow has not 
come. A handful of hours flung down between 
the East and the West! You take them up, 
I take them up; and as they pass through our 
consciousness, these mysterious fragments of 
time are changed into something we call life, 
something we call conduct, something we call 
character. 

Only a day! The whole lifetime of the 
gauzy-winged insect that floats in the sunlit 
air. The twenty-thousandth part of the three- 
score years allotted to man. 

How small and insignificant and cheap 
when compared with the flowing centuries 
that break and fall over the edge of Eternity! 
And yet not insignificant and cheap when it 
holds in its bosom events that blight or glorify 
a human heart — not cheap to the repentant 
soul that would give a kingdom to whiten the 
stain of one disgraceful deed — not cheap to 
the heart that thrills with the memory of the 
tender grace of a day that is dead — not cheap 
to the life that in one great hour caught a 
vision of its high ideal and there made the vow 



78 



MAGIC WELLS 



of a new allegiance — not cheap or worthless 
or insignificant to any man or woman who 
wants to grow in spirit, who wants to help by 
service, and who greets the passing hours with 
expectant face and obedient hands. 

" Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" 

Has it been in the field of your petty dis- 
likes and rancors and prejudices? Have you 
spent the hours in brooding over the little 
frictions of life, in nursing the spirit of retalia- 
tion, in sharpening the tools of scorn and 
ridicule? Have you come back with the sneer 
still on your face, and your hps still hot with 
the burning words you have spoken, and your 
heart still confused with the passion of spite 
and ill-will? 

How poor and small and mean it all seems 
when you think of the worth of time and the 
dignity of human life! What an atmosphere 
for the living soul to breathe! How debasing 
for the lordly mind, to hitch it to a cartful of 
scraps and refuse that ought to be buried out 
of sight! Yes, fife is full of little snarls and 
perversities; the social alphabet gets mixed 
up; tongues have stings, and memories grow 



"WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 79 

weak, and many a hand hides in its palm the 
little dagger of pain. 

There is our path opening before us. How 
straight and smooth it seems! But soon some 
one jostles against us, or passes on the wrong 
side, or wants the path for himself. Or some 
one laughs, or forgets to speak, or does any 
one of a hundred little things that burn and 
smart like sparks of fire. 

Why nurse our wrath until the heart for- 
gets to be just? Why let our prejudices harden 
upon us, like an armor of steel? Why busy 
ourselves with the stings of contempt and the 
arrows of retort until the soul knows nothing 
else and has become blind to the vision that 
lights the pathway of the nobler life! That is 
the penalty that falls like the hand of fate. 
The heart forgets its dream and is content to 
live among these contemptible surroundings, 
forgets what it started out to do and loses 
itself in the tangle of its own petty misunder- 
standings. 

No life can ever wear the garment of mag- 
nanimity until it has outgrown these beggarly 
nothings. No life is worthy of a royal name, 
that goes down from the throne to serve as the 
menial of its own trivial prejudices. 



80 



MAGIC WELLS 



" Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" 

Has it been in the field of selfishness? 
Have your thoughts and hopes and efforts all 
been focused on one thing, and that thing the 
petted idol of self? Have you had no desires 
save those that, like carrier pigeons, always 
come back to your own bosom? Have you 
had no ambitions, no aspirations, no interests, 
save those that minister to your own advan- 
tage? Indeed, the life must preserve itself. 
Indeed, the eye must see and the ear listen and 
the hand reach out to win the things that 
keep the heart alive. 

How often that argument is used to si- 
lence the voice of conscience and to whet the 
appetite of every grasping instinct! And so 
the man becomes absorbed in himself and the 
woman becomes absorbed in herself, and self- 
ishness sits at the fireside and greed rules in 
the street, and the human soul, surfeited with 
spoils and yet starving and dying all the time, 
staggers downward to the edge of the grave. 

That is the tragedy of it all. Selfishness 
always defeats its own ends. We think we are 
growing, when we are only withering like the 
autumn leaf. 



"WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 81 

We call our selfish wishes together and bid 
them, without mercy and without love, to 
forage for the day, and at night they come 
back and lay their rich conquests at our feet; 
and we feast with song and laughter, while 
the nobler self, the larger instincts of love and 
charity and good-will, are denied and for- 
gotten. Not until the heart sends out its 
desires laden with gifts, not until the soul 
transcends its own selfish limitations, does it 
find itself and learn the meaning of what it 
is to live. 

For the nature that is shut in with itself, 
seeing nothing, knowing nothing but its own 
wants and its own satisfaction, is like the 
dungeon prisoner clothed in costly raiment 
and fed sumptuously every day and yet alone 
in the deep black darkness, — no vision of sun 
and stars and breath of world, no sound but 
the muffled beat of his own heart, no com- 
panionship but the cold, dripping walls that 
enclose his life. 

" Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" 
Has it been among the fashions and fri- 
volities of a superficial world? Have you come 



82 



MAGIC WELLS 



back from the day's engagements with noth- 
ing to show but the pretty chaff and the 
thistledown values of Vanity Fair? 

Granted the need of relaxation. The bow 
must not always be bent and the arrow drawn 
to the head. Not always must the strong 
thought control the brain and the serious im- 
pulse sway the heart. There are times when 
work is a crime and seriousness is a sin — times 
when idleness is a virtue, and nonsense a 
blessing, and frivolity a beautiful and saving 
grace. 

But, confessing this, we must also confess 
that life is too short and mind and heart too 
valuable to be worn out in the habitual pur- 
suit of the jingling gayeties of the heedless 
world. Here is where the pity and shame and 
sin of it all come in, — giving the great days to 
feed the hunger for new sensations; commis- 
sioning a soul to blow soap-bubbles or to chase 
the butterflies dancing in the sunbeams; liv- 
ing a life for nothing but these things, unwill- 
ing to rouse their finer sentiments, unable to 
read the pictured meanings on the face of the 
Universe, still playing with the toys of child- 
hood, going out of this magnificently rich world 



"WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 83 



as poor as they came into it, and passing up 
to the great assize with neglected hearts and 
empty minds. 

" Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" 

Has it been in the mellow fields of the world's 
best things: its thought, its culture, its beauty, 
its aspiration and splendid dreams? Has the 
day's work brought to you a wider vision and 
a fresh inspiration for to-morrow? It ought 
to do so. For to the seeking soul the revela- 
tion shall come, and to the knocking hand the 
door shall be opened, and the listening ear 
shall hear the music, and the watching eye 
shall behold the wondrous beauty. 

What a stirring challenge it all flings down 
to the eager mind! What a privilege it is to 
breathe, to think, to lay the lines of work in a 
world whose azure walls rise to the clouds and 
whose floor is laid with tapestries woven in the 
summer sun or the winter storms, — a world 
stored with the treasures of human genius, art 
and poetry and song and deathless thought, — 
a world glorified by love and friendship and 
emotions too sacred for speech, and over all, the 
morning light and the sunset glow and the 
midnight stars! 



84 



MAGIC WELLS 



Blessed is the man who has eyes to see and 
ears to hear! Blessed is the man who under- 
stands as he goes, and every day gleans out 
of the bountiful world some new thought, some 
nobler emotion, some larger sense of the divine- 
ness of life! That, indeed, is changing time 
into character. That, indeed, is growing rich 
in the things of the spirit. 

And when the fires of youth burn low and 
the snows of old age fall upon the brow and the 
robust world shall have no room for him in the 
arena of affairs, then shall the resources of his 
own soul sweeten life to the end and at even- 
tide it shall be light. 

" Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" 

Has it been in the field of service? As you 
have toiled side by side with your fellow- workers 
have you seen the weak and the tired and the 
discouraged and given the hand of strength 
and sounded the note of cheer? The soldier 
leaps to the bugle-call and rushes to the battle- 
line. That is service. The teacher opens the 
book of knowledge to the inquiring youth. 
That is service. The millionaire pours out his 
gold in the name of philanthropy. That is 



"WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 85 

service. The statesman, the lawyer, the phy- 
sician, the business man perform their tasks 
with fidelity and care. These all are serving 
and helping in the march of the world. 

But all along the way there are a thousand 
little things to be done besides protecting the 
flag and educating the youth and selling bread 
in the marketplace. 

Men stumble and fall and fail. Men lose 
heart and grit and will. Men are doomed to 
menial tasks, doomed to bear crosses upon 
their shoulders, doomed to climb rough paths 
of life with bleeding feet. We are all march- 
ing together, brothers side by side, brothers 
looking toward the same grave and the same 
divine promise. There one falls! There one 
pauses bewildered and afraid! There one's 
face grows white with pain! There one sobs 
in despair and struggles on! Who serves now? 
He who gives the cup of cold water, who binds 
up the bleeding feet, who holds out the hand 
of help and gives the smile of cheer and speaks 
the heartening word and calls to every waver- 
ing soul to be brave and true. 

Thanks be to God for the gospel of en- 
couragement. Thanks for the men and women 



86 



MAGIC WELLS 



who preach it in their lives, who dissipate fear 
and squander sunshine and mend broken hearts 
and cause tears to be dried and flowers to bloom 
wherever they go, The day is lost that comes 
to an end without any one being helped by 
your presence. The day is saved, made fit to 
rank with great days, if in one of its hours you 
have touched some other life to higher courage 
and brighter hopes. 

Gleaning to-day in the field of lif e ! Heaven 
above us and the earth beneath our feet and 
the multitude of workers thronging all around 
us. God everywhere, loving, teaching, help- 
ing, and writing upon the front of every pass- 
ing hour the great word "Opportunity." For 
in His world, every day is a day of fortune, 
every day opens a continuous privilege of mak- 
ing life richer and finer; every day, opportuni- 
ties lie all around us, thick as leaves in autumn 
woods, — opportunities to be gracious and un- 
selfish, opportunities to grasp the high thought 
and do the noble deed, opportunities to taste 
the cup of living water and pass it on to others ; 
and there is no work so mean, no fife so humble, 
no day so crowded or so brief, that the earnest 
man or woman cannot find opportunity to be 



"WHERE HAST THOU GLEANED?" 87 



learner and teacher and helper and saint and 
hero and savior, all in one. 

Emerson sings, in a mood of humble con- 
fession : 

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days 
Muffled and dumb like barefoot Dervishes 
And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands, 
To each they offer gifts after his will, 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds 
them all. 

I in my pleached garden saw the pomp, 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. 



How those searching words rebuke us all! 
The herbs and apples must indeed be taken, 
but out of the deeper cravings of every 
earnest soul comes the cry for that which is 
more than bread and better than raiment. 
Well do we deserve the scorn of parting Day, 
if out of all it has offered we choose only 
these crude material things. It is an op- 
portunity forever lost, and the golden promise 
of every hour turns to ashes and dust in our 



ss 



MAGIC WELLS 



hands. We are therefore to let no day pass 
by without leaving us better for its coming, 
to let no toil of gleaning fail to make us 
richer in things of the higher life, and then 
the day becomes a benediction, becomes an 
encouragement for all future days; and when 
for us the sun sinks in the west, and the 
twilight steals across the hills, we shall come 
back to the Father's house bringing our 
sheaves with us. 

Our Heavenly Father, we are labor- 
ers within the world. Let us be inspired 
with the thought of Thy presence and be 
enlarged with the thought of our privileges 
and opportunities. And let Thy king- 
dom ever be in us a glorious city, a won- 
derful empire, a kingdom of power, and 
peace and eternal life. Amen. 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 



"I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." 
— Gen. xxxii. 26. 

JACOB was no saint. If he were alive 
today, his commercial genius and his elastic 
principles would place him in the front rank 
of the world's unscrupulous money-getters. 

And yet Jacob had his good side. If you 
read between the lines of his rascalities, you 
will find that he possessed some qualities that 
always saved him from absolute moral col- 
lapse. One of those qualities was a conscience 
that oftentimes chided his rapacity, and led 
him into devout and religious moods. 

It was in one of these religious spasms that 
the incident happened of which the text is a 
partial record. 

He was running away from his outraged 
father-in-law and was approaching the ter- 
ritory of his brother Esau, whom he had robbed 
of blessing and birthright years before. It was 
the night before he was to meet his brother — 
just the time for conscience to trouble his sleep 
and make him fearful of the morrow. It is 

91 



92 



MAGIC WELLS 



then, we are told, that there appeared before 
him a stranger — a man or angel — and began to 
wrestle with him. All night the struggle went 
on. Bruised, lame, exhausted, Jacob clung to 
his adversary, crying all the time, "I will not 
let thee go, except thou bless me." And when 
the day began to dawn, the strange wrestler 
yielded, blessed the unfortunate Jacob, and 
disappeared. 

Of course this is not history. It is a legend 
of the elder time, a blossom of the Hebrew 
imagination, but after all, a flower bedded in 
human experience, — one of those unhistoric 
truths that often are of more value than many 
authentic facts. 

It is, I say, a small edition of human ex- 
perience. The heart of it is as fresh and true 
to-day as it was thousands of years ago, when 
the old writer penned the story. Jacob may 
stand for you or me or any man; the strange 
visitor is but the symbol of those events and 
experiences that come into the life of us all, 
and the long, wearisome struggle till the day 
breaks is the struggle of the wise, earnest soul 
to win the blessing before the event has passed 
by or the experience has been forgotten. 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 



93 



You see how much is wrapped up in this 
old-time story; and what I want to do with it 
is to get out of it that simple and very common- 
place lesson of the importance of holding on 
until the blessing comes, — the necessity of never 
letting an event or experience go by until we 
have extracted from it its virtue and its grace. 
All things in life have their moral side; the wide 
world in which a man moves is simply a great 
schoolroom, where everything he sees and hears 
and touches has some lesson to teach him, or 
some message to whisper into his ears. 

It is hard to believe that the earth is alive 
with electrical force. We can see it here and 
there, — in the car rolling along the street, in 
the lamps that blaze in the darkness, in the 
storm cloud of a summer day, — and yet all we 
need is a little friction, or the right method of 
approach or contact, to discover that every 
clod and grass-blade and floating speck of 
matter in the air — all are aquiver with the 
subtle fluid that enwraps the globe from pole 
to pole. 

And so it is in this world of objects and 
events, which surrounds a man's life. A hun- 
dred things which he encounters every day may 



94 



MAGIC WELLS 



seem to have no moral meaning whatever — and 
yet it needs but a little chafing, it needs but a 
little turn on the social wheel, it needs but a 
slight change in the usual relation, — to cause 
them to throw out sparks of spiritual influence, 
and to show that they too are charged with 
the moral meanings that surge through the 
Universe. 

What I mean is, that the ordinary trans- 
actions of a day, the ordinary mechanisms of 
life, the commonplace experiences of the hour 
— all have the power to arouse in our hearts 
feelings, sensations, moods that have a tre- 
mendous influence in shaping moral character. 

You have only to think of two or three 
illustrations to see how true that is. 

It is hard to see at first sight how the aver- 
age breakfast that we sit down to every morn- 
ing has any moral or spiritual significance 
whatever — and yet we all know very well that 
the whole moral temper of the day is very 
often determined by some trifle of that morn- 
ing meal. 

The missing of a train, the spoiling of a 
pleasure by a shower of rain, the perversity 
of the dumb beast that we drive, and a thou- 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 95 



sand other things of a similar nature are all 
little wellsprings of annoyance that directly 
or indirectly have their bearing on the moral 
tenor of our lives. 

This is true not only of our petty disap- 
pointments, but it is equally true of these 
large forces in the world that crush ambitions 
and make hearts bleed and sow tragedies over 
the fields of life. They are moral forces in 
their last analysis; they are agencies that, in 
blood and tears, write messages across the 
hearts of men. 

What is thus true of those things that 
make pain and trouble is likewise true of those 
that bring gladness and peace: all victories 
are moral victories at last. All pleasures and 
delights, whether of body or mind, must some- 
where leave their mark for good or ill in the 
fabric of the soul. 

Everything in life, then, is moral; its times 
and relations and conditions and experiences 
are all instrumentalities of the spirit, are all 
agencies that are capable of blessing and en- 
larging a man's life. And now this fact leads 
me on to another, — a fact which I think we 
all have observed, — that one of the chief 



96 



MAGIC WELLS 



differences among men lies in this power to 
get the moral meanings out of daily life. 

People begin to divide when they come to 
the point of interpreting their own experiences. 
Some always see the world as a dull and speech- 
less mechanism of life, and others find it full 
of meaning and inspiration. To some life is 
as bare as a fortress wall. They touch their 
business with listless, indifferent hands; they 
go about their household affairs as if they were 
in the service of some heartless master, their 
place in the world a sort of treadmill, where 
something very disagreeable must be ground 
out that men call "duty." All is dull and cheap 
and commonplace. They may travel the wide 
earth over and yet see nothing after all but 
the earth. They live in this rich, tuneful 
world, just as a deaf man might be in the midst 
of the grandest music, hearing nothing at all, 
simply because they will not or cannot inter- 
pret the voices that are speaking to them out 
of every relation and experience of life. 

And then, on the other hand, I am sure 
you know people who are just the opposite — 
people who somehow, like Antaeus of old, 
never touch the earth without getting strength 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 97 



and inspiration from it, people who are always 
bringing a blessing from some trial or diffi- 
culty, people who are always picking diamonds 
out of substances that others spurned and 
discarded, people who are always full of en- 
thusiasm and hope and spiritual vigor, because 
they have learned how to unlock the secret of 
common things. 

I look over the men and women whom the 
years have brought more or less into my life 
and I see, I think very clearly, that those who 
are the most successful, even from a worldly 
point of view, are those who have remembered 
what happened the day before and who looked 
upon difficulty not as something to be escaped, 
but as something to be conquered for the 
treasure it held. 

I look again and I see that those who are 
the happiest, those who have the secret of peace 
in their hearts, are those who as they went 
along made the clods speak and the trees sing 
and every wayside experience give up its hid- 
den joy. 

I look once more and I see that those who 
are strongest to smother their own pain in 
order to help others bear theirs, those who are 



98 



MAGIC WELLS 



most calm amid the terrors of life's storms, 
those who at midnight are most trustful of 
some guiding goodness within and beyond the 
darkness, are those who have won their strength 
from daily trial and have read the testimony 
of an all-wise Providence in the common 
affairs of life. 

And so I conclude that the main thing in 
life, after all, is to learn to beat out the wheat 
from the sheaves of experience. 

The principal business of us all is to get 
grace and virtue and largeness of life out of 
the transient and common things as we go 
along. 

Indeed, it seems to me that is the only 
object of living, in the highest, best sense. 

What is life for, unless it is to make charac- 
ter? What is life worth, unless it is character? 

Life is not eating and drinking, not gather- 
ing wealth or fighting poverty, not making 
machines or selling merchandise or numbering 
the stars, but it is the ability, while in the 
midst of all these things, to see the invisible 
and to hear the voice of our unseen teachers. 

And it is for this that all other things exist. 
What does all this preparation for the ways of 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 99 



the world mean, unless it means preparation 
for conquering the world? 

Your schools and colleges, your churches 
and your movements for reform, your fireside 
training going on in a million homes all over 
the land — all these mean nothing and have no 
reason for existence, unless they are educating 
men and women to see deeper than the surface 
of things, and to read intelligently the mes- 
sages of the world in which they live. 

You see it all comes at last simply to this: 
that the real life, the best life, is the life of 
continual interpretation, the life of translating 
daily experience into the graces of manly and 
womanly character. 

The world is rich, and you cannot afford 
to be poor. The world is full of knowledge, 
and you cannot afford to be ignorant. The 
world is sending a procession of facts and 
experience past your door every day, and you 
cannot afford to let one of them go by without 
giving you the blessing it is able to bestow. 

You may do as you will, — you may refuse 
to see or hear, you may let the procession pass 
on unheeded, and then, live long as you may, 
sixty, eighty, one hundred years, — you still 



100 



MAGIC WELLS 



will never have lived much. Who is the man 
who has lived most? Indeed not he who is 
old and empty, not he whom we glibly call 
experienced simply because he has lived long, 
but he, no matter what his age, who has made 
his own soul the wine- vat wherein the precious 
vintage of time is pressed and mellowed into 
the wine of life. Paul, writing to the Corin- 
thians and speaking of the communion of the 
Lord's Supper, says that some may eat and 
drink to their own condemnation. He did not 
mean punishment after death, but he was think- 
ing of their spiritual loss here and now for not 
catching the deeper meanings of the rite, and 
in a vastly wider sense I believe it is true also. 
Life is simply one great communion table, 
about which we all gather to partake of the 
visible symbols of God's spirit. And we may 
so eat and drink that bread and wine shall 
bring to us divine messages, or we may so eat 
and drink that the whole sacred service, from 
cradle to grave, shall be to us nothing but a 
gross and material thing. That is eating and 
drinking to our own damnation; that is living 
in the world heedless of its beauty and its 
power, — and that is loss indeed. 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 101 

And so I pray you look for the sacramental 
side of your life — look for the spirit behind 
the forms of experience — look for the lessons 
that lurk in every path you tread, in every 
thorn-bush by the wayside, in every cloud or 
glint of sunshine above your head. Let the 
procession of events go through your life, and 
not fly over it like birds of passage. Let no 
messenger come and go without leaving its 
secret with you. I know how hard all this 
often is. I know how forbidding and grim 
and terrible some of these messages are. And 
yet every one holds in its hand a chalice brim- 
ming with communion wine. 

Take, for instance, that very common 
visitor of us all — the messenger that lays the 
shadow of some great sorrow upon our hearts. 
What shall we do with our griefs? How shall 
we meet them? How shall we bear them? 
How many have asked that question! And 
some have tried to answer it by trying to forget 
their heartache, and some have tried to answer 
it by a stoical indifference, and still others have 
sunk into a morbid self-pitying condition, as 
if that would ease the pain. And they all have 
failed. And yet there is a compensation at 



102 



MAGIC WELLS 



the heart of every sorrow, but it is not to be 
found in forgetfumess or stoicism or tearful 
self-consciousness ; but when you take your 
grief and hold it so tenderly and thoughtfully 
that it warms your heart into sympathy for 
others and quickens your feet on missions of 
mercy, then, in very truth, the peace that you 
long for is over your life, and the blessedness 
of mourning is already yours. 

And so it is, too, in your trials and tempta- 
tions. They are experiences that you can ill 
afford to do without. The Apostle James 
says that trial is good for a man; that you and 
I ought to deem ourselves fortunate indeed 
when we fall into divers temptations, for by 
them our patience is perfected and our charac- 
ters made strong. 

That certainly is true. Temptation is 
good if we keep its discipline: it is worthless 
and bad if it leaves no lesson behind. Suppose 
the temptation comes and you yield, and then 
follows the sin and the bitter hours of repent- 
ance. Well, what is your sin good for? That 
is the question to ask. Not how you can for- 
get, not how you can bury it deep out of sight. 
I do not believe in burying things until they 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 103 

are wholly dead. And no sin is dead, no sin is 
ready for burial, until it has given up the last 
spark of what it has to teach him who com- 
mitted it. It is bad enough to do wrong; it is 
infinitely worse to do wrong and not learn 
something good and helpful from the experience. 

Or suppose the temptation comes and you 
win the battle ! Ah, that is very brave and fine ! 
And how proud your hearts grow over the 
victory! And yet the bare victory is not 
enough. The simple fact that you have fought 
and won means very little. You have not yet 
got the value out of the fight. Look at Jesus. 
He had the secret when he went down from the 
mount of temptation. It was a greater con- 
fidence in his own strength and a wider charity 
for the weakness of his fellow-men. And until 
you have found that, until out of your struggle 
and hard-won triumph there comes to you 
more courage to meet the next temptation and 
more love and pity for those whose victories 
are few — not until then is the moral meaning 
of temptation completely yours. 

The same thing is true of your difficulties 
and hardships in life. Oh, how plentiful the 
obstacles are! How the world bristles with 



104 MAGIC WELLS 

bayonet-points of pain! How everything 
worth having is hedged about with barriers 
that have to be broken down with toil and 
trouble ! 

And yet it is a blessing that it is so. I 
only tell you what you have heard a thousand 
times, what most of you have learned from 
your own experience, — that obstacles are the 
stepping-stones to noble strength, and that the 
path to the best manhood and womanhood 
leads over the rough and rugged steeps of life. 

It is so hard to make you young people be- 
lieve that. You pray for ease; you dream of a 
life smooth as a summer sea, — and yet were 
life that, it would not be worth the asking by 
any noble soul. You need not court difficulty 
— you need not seek for crosses and martyr- 
doms. They will all come in time. Only when 
they come, meet them without dismay; close 
with them as if you meant to win; hold on to 
them until you feel the sense of new strength 
and know that the blessing has been given. 

And now one other word. There is another 
side to life. We have seen the meaning of its 
pains and difficulties. What shall we say of 
its joys and successes? Have they any hid- 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 105 



den blessings to give, any secret messages to 
deliver? Indeed they have — and I sometimes 
think that joy and success are such blessings 
in themselves, that we seldom look deeper for 
any different blessings that they may have to 
give. We get so wrapped up in our good times 
that we forget that there may be bad times for 
somebody else. God pity us if we do. God 
pity us indeed if prosperity is walling us away 
from our brethren, or any pride of power is 
slowing the pulse of our hearts. God pity us 
indeed if in this pursuit of outward things we 
forget ourselves and leave the best of our 
souls behind. 

If defeat has moral lessons, so has victory. 
If difficulty has its inner meaning, so have ease 
and comfort. If sorrow has its blessing to be 
won, so has joy, — a benediction to give the 
soul. And you who see so much of this glad 
side of the world, you who hold its comforts and 
know its best things, it is for you to watch your 
lives and see that wealth shall bring you be- 
nevolence, that power shall open to you the 
beauty of humility, and that culture and knowl- 
edge shall be answered back by helpfulness 
and love. 



106 



MAGIC WELLS 



Ponder these things, for they are the deepest 
things of life. Everything is moral, everything 
is sacramental, to the earnest and devout man. 
From Christ on the cross to the worm that is 
crushed by the careless foot, from Columbus 
christening a new world to the bee sipping 
the nectar of some wayside flower — through 
all the infinite tragedy and joy and gladness of 
this great world, everything has its message to 
give and its blessing to bestow. 

And so life becomes not a painted show, 
but a communion cup — not a stiff procession of 
marching years, but rather a coming of angels 
from God to man, each of them carrying some 
blessing and each of them carrying it away 
again, unless you or I who stand by shall lay 
hold of the angel's robe and cry: " Abide with 
me. I will not let thee go, except thou bless 
me." 

And so when you find that life is not 
blessing you, do not blame life, but know that 
you yourself are at fault, that through some 
perversity or blindness or negligence, you are 
missing the treasures that life stands ready to 
deliver. Remember that no lot is so humble 
and no craft so simple, that it cannot furnish 



WRESTLING AND BLESSING 107 



at every turn some holy vision or some oracle 
of the divine will. As all roads in the ancient 
time met at last in the Roman Forum, so all 
paths and roads of life join at last the great 
highway that leads to God. 

" 'Cross the field of daily work 

Run the footpaths, leading — where? 
Run they East or run they West, 
One way all the workers fare : 
Every awful thing of Earth, — 
Sin and pain and battle-noise, — 
Every dear thing, — baby's birth, 
Faces, flowers, or lover's joys, — 
Is a wicket gate where we 
Join the great highway to Thee." 

Thou art the Great Teacher. We are 
the learners sitting at Thy feet, listening 
to Thy voice speaking to us out of the 
wonders of the universe, out of the history 
of the human race, out of the events of 
every day, out of our hearts' experiences. 
Help us to be reverent and intelligent, and 
worthy of the great message that is given 
to our ears. Amen. 



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE — 
THAT IS THE QUESTION" 



'TO BE OR NOT TO BE —THAT IS 
THE QUESTION" 



"I call heaven and earth to record that I 
have set before you life and death, blessing 
and cursing: therefore choose life." — Deut. 
xxx. 19. 

MAN seems to be the only animal that is 
endowed with the privilege of deliberative y 
choice. Life is spread before him, and he is 
permitted to decide what to do with it. He can 
conclude that it is not worth the responsibility 
and reject it. Or he can accept it and become 
the custodian of all that goes with it. Hamlet 
is the type of reflective man who balances 
existence and non-existence in his two palms 
and considers whether it is better to be and 
face outrageous fortune, or, with the bare 
bodkin, usher himself into unconscious peace. 

At some moment we all have been Hamlet. 
The question flits now and then through the 
chambers of the brain, like an evil and vagrant 
bird. In some black hour, there is the vague 

glimmer of the bodkin's blade, and then it sud- 

111 



112 



MAGIC WELLS 



denly changes into the star of hope. The 
choice follows the star. That is the history of 
the race. It has chosen life plus the worst. 
Indeed, otherwise, there never would have 
been a race at all. 

When Horace Greeley was at the height 
of his editorial fame, he delivered, one winter, 
a course of lectures in various cities of the 
country. One day, George William Curtis 
asked him how he determined the success of 
his lectures. After reflecting a moment, he 
replied, "When more people stay in than go 
out." That is equally good as a test of the 
worthfulness of life. 

Most people seem to find the world very 
interesting, and, notwithstanding certain dull 
moments and annoying experiences, prefer to 
stay in than go out. If you could make a care- 
ful inventory of the world's woes and set it 
side by side with a similar list of the world's 
joys, your joy list would dwarf into conspicuous 
littleness your record of pain. 

The universe is built on that plan, so that 
at whatever angle you approach it, if your eye 
is a normal eye, you will see at least three 
pictures of happiness to one of misery. That is 



TO BE OR NOT TO BE" 



113 



why a billion and half human beings are cling- 
ing to the globe this moment. They find it on 
the whole pleasant, agreeable, and worth while. 

But the contention is often made that this 
is a far too rosy view of life. It is said that the 
multitude is not clinging to the earth because 
they are comfortable and like it, but because 
they are afraid to let go. 

We are told in the words of one scientist 
that nature is an "old hag"; in the lines of a 
great poet, that she is "red with raven tooth 
and claw"; and there is a somewhat familiar 
philosophy that carves up the universe and so 
arranges the pieces in the show-window that 
the worst comes uppermost, and you go away 
wondering why the birds sing and children 
laugh at their play. This is the philosophy of 
pessimism, and some phases of it are, in modern 
newspaper speech, termed "crepe-hanging" or 
"taking the joy out of life." It assumes that 
the tragic and evil aspects of life prevail every- 
where; that progress and prosperity and hap- 
piness are only incidental, — only, so to speak, 
the colored selvage of the dismal web which 
the loom of time is turning out. Schopen- 
hauer, of the last century, was the great 



114 



MAGIC WELLS 



exponent of this interpretation of the world. 
And after nicely proving that this is the 
worst possible universe, he tells us that the 
wisest thing to do is to put our forehead in 
the dust and accept with dogged resignation 
the gruesome inevitable. 

Now and then a wave of this despondency 
seems to sweep in upon the world's mind. It 
becomes the mood and temper of the hour. 
Hearts grow sick over the crookedness and 
stupidity of men, or the disjointed condition 
of the times, and good souls wonder whether 
it is any use to continue to mend a machine 
that was built wrong in the beginning and is 
always getting out of order. If I am not mis- 
taken, that spirit of depression is making some 
headway at the present time. We have ended 
one war, only to find the world in worse con- 
fusion than before. Traditions are smashed 
to pieces, authority railed at and defied, stand- 
ards raised on which are new and strange de- 
vices, — blind ignorance practicing the art of 
prophecy, and greed and selfishness and treach- 
ery acting their parts unabashed: 

Society seems to be in a topsy-turvy state, 
as if a gigantic hand had been thrust into its 



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE" 



115 



orderly arrangement and turned over its in- 
stitutions and set awry its familiar primness. 

Some view this condition with a kind of 
hopeless consternation. They are drifting into 
the stupor of despair. "What is the use/' they 
say, "of bolstering up civilization any longer? 
Let us shut our eyes, put our foreheads in the 
dust, and resignedly wait for the end." 

That is practical pessimism. 

There are two things to be said to that type 
of mind. 

First, a disjointed time is a ringing chal- 
lenge to live men and women. That is the 
very time and that is the very condition of 
things that ought to wake all their valors, 
lift them out of the dust, set them on their 
feet, and then fling them with belted courage 
into the service of reconstruction. 

In my canoeing days on the great Canadian 
rivers, there were long stretches of quiet water 
where lilies bloomed and shadows of lofty trees 
fell athwart the glassy stream. How peaceful 
and easy and unthrilling it all was! I could 
sit with the paddle across my knees and 
sleepily drift with the gentle tide. But when 
the stream began to narrow and the placid 



116 



MAGIC WELLS 



current heave up in green swirls and the dull 
roar of rapids beyond came to my ears, there 
was a thrill, a tenseness of preparation, a joy 
of receiving a challenge straight in the face. 
The river was offering me a man's job! Who 
was I to decline it and go back to float 
among the lily pads and bemoan the per- 
versity of Canadian rivers? 

"If these are the times that try men's souls," 
then the true man's soul welcomes the trial and 
braces itself to meet the impact. It is no time 
for limp despair and melancholy prophecy. A 
man's job, with its trumpet call and testing 
hazard, knocks at the door. 

Then, in the second place, this is to be said 
to the man who is tempted to let go in dis- 
couragement: Your own pessimism, your own 
gloomy forebodings are sign and proof that you 
are measuring your times by better standards. 
You see the darkness, because the light shines 
somewhere and flings the contrast on the screen. 
Your pessimism is only the exaggerated esti- 
mate of what is possible. When you see the 
devil in clearest outline, is when an angel stands 
all radiant just behind him. Emerson says 
that man is mean, and then asks, "But how did 



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE" 



117 



he find it out?" Only by imagining a better 
man. 

If we had not seen the ideal, if we had not 
been able to picture to ourselves an improve- 
ment and were unable to see anything wrong, 
we should have camped in a primitive world, 
and, quite satisfied with our own perfection, 
would have died in ignorance of anything higher 
than our hairy barbarism. It was because 
somebody grumbled and even talked pes- 
simism in savage speech, and then, not con- 
tent with his office of camp-faultfinder, said, 
"I for one am going to move on to-morrow 
morning," and moved — it is because of that, 
that those primitive campfires are fifty thou- 
sand years behind us. 

Go back to any time of the past when the 
voice of a Jeremiah was not heard in the land, 
and you come to social stagnation. It is only 
when a people are waked up to the evils of their 
time, when they are actually reaching out for 
something nobler and better, when they have 
broken up the crust of the old content, that 
Jeremiah opens his magic lantern and begins 
the show. And so, my gloomy friend, cheer 
up! You are not the prophet of evil omen, 



118 



MAGIC WELLS 



as you think, but the harbinger of greater 
and brighter days. 

You are right when you say things are bad, 
but you are wrong when you say that your 
discovery augurs nothing better. You have 
proved beyond a doubt, that darkness prevails. 
We realize it and are thankful for your alarm- 
ing cry. Now go out with us, help lift the 
morning sun over the horizon. 

There are people who indict the Universe. 
They summon it into court and charge it with 
various imperfections. One of the kings of 
Spain said that if he had been present at the 
creation he could have made some valuable 
suggestions to the Creator. We can be thank- 
ful that he was not there, for every man who 
has ever tried to tinker with the laws of life as 
imbedded in the constitution of things, has 
always fallen on trouble, and could he have 
succeeded, would have thrown the cosmic order 
into a hopeless tangle. 

As a place in which to educate a human race, 
it is impossible to conceive anything better. 
It is a school; and no doubt, some of the pupils 
would like to have certain rules suspended. 
If it could be granted, the school would close. 



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE' 



119 



The best things would perish with what seem 
to be the worst things. 

You would drop out sorrow and auto- 
matically with it would go sympathy. You 
would drop out pain and with it would go 
every realization of pleasure. You would drop 
out defeat and what would become of the royal 
stuff of courage? You would drop out a hundred 
penalties and away would go a hundred vital 
lessons. The virtues go chasing after the so- 
called evils, and you would have left a fine, 
flat, drab world peopled by imbeciles. 

It is best to leave the universe as it is and 
attend to ourselves, as beings born out of it. 
If we paid more attention to self-adjustment 
and obedience, and less attention to petulant 
meddling with the wheels of its going, we should 
find living immensely worth while and the 
universe the best imaginable friend. 

Who are the people who find life dull and 
tasteless? Who find it worthless and intoler- 
able? Apart from those of whom we would 
speak very tenderly — those who find life bitter 
because of some freak of temperament or 
exceptional calamity — apart from these, al- 
most without exception they are people who 



120 



MAGIC WELLS 



have starved their spirits, blunted sensibility, 
or have lost touch with the big, warm body of 
things. 

Life is stale and commonplace because they 
have sounded only its shallow pools or else 
because they have left the procession and with- 
drawn behind the curtains of a selfish and 
introspective unconcern. 

And the procession goes on. — the laughing 
child, the dreaming mother, the toiling man, — 
and without distinction of race or wealth or 
position of service, they hail the universe as a 
success and feel that it is good to be alive. 

What is life? It is just opportunity — oppor- 
tunity to use one brain and one heart and two 
hands. 

You can view that opportunity in two 
aspects. 

(1) You can think of life as merely time, 
duration, length — a thread of consciousness 
wound up on a spool — so many yards of sensa- 
tion that you slowly unwind day after day. 
That is dull business, of course. Xo one is 
interested in just breathing as the totality of 
life. Life like that might run a thousand years 



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE' 



121 



and the last breath would be no better than 
the first and no more significant than the final 
tick of an exhausted clock. 

(2) You can also think of life as breadth, 
as something distinctly more than a physiolog- 
ical process, as a stream of consciousness that, 
beginning in some tiny fountain head, pur- 
sues its course to the distant sea — ever widen- 
ing and deepening, ever expanding in lovely 
prospects, touching the waiting fields with 
refreshment, and receiving to itself all along 
the way the fluent wealth of neighboring hill 
and vale. 

That aspect of life kindles the eye and 
stirs the heart to eagerness. 

In that conception of life lies its specific 
worth. Again it is opportunity — opportunity 
to be and to do, to get something out of the 
world and to put something into the world. 
It is worth while, then, to stay in the world 
for what you can get out of it. That has an 
evil sound, as if one were perched like a vulture 
on some high place, estimating the landscape 
in terms of prey. 

Let us have no philanthropic cant. 

You must have feet before you can tread 



122 



MAGIC WELLS 



the path of service. You must have hands 
before you can reach them out in blessing. 
You must have power before you can put power 
into the world. Let us then be honest and say 
that life is for getting something — getting 
power, wisdom, things, tools, means, material. 
You may call that the selfish instinct if you 
wish, but it is one of the foundation-stones of 
human nature, and God set it deep and firm. 
The desire to get has been the passion of the 
race. It has committed gross wrongs, and it 
has bestowed uncounted blessings. Nearly 
every item of civilization is the flower of that 
passion. And men have loved life and have 
found it absorbingly fascinating because of its 
opportunity to satisfy this instinctive desire. 

It is fundamentally a good, clean, honest 
desire, and we need be ashamed of it only 
when we distort it into injustice and cruelty. 

Then, life opens the opportunity of doing. 
That means the self rushing out into expres- 
sion, not merely in forms of acquisition nor 
under the impulse of sheer getting, but the 
giving back the fruits of desire, the winnings 
of experience, the gifts of nature — giving them 



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE" 



123 



all back to the common life in types of personal 
service. It means genius, high or low, out of 
its fullness pouring itself into the art of crea- 
tion. And that is a great joy — the joy of 
creating something, whether it be a water- 
ditch or a marble Apollo. 

It means the disciplined mind thinking out 
great principles of action and testing them out 
in ethics and law, in the building of states and 
civilized institutions. 

It means the scientist, breaking the seals of 
mystery and interpreting to the listening world 
the wondrous messages writ on Nature's scroll. 
It means the man of love going about doing 
good, ministering to the sick, breaking the 
chains of bondage, cleansing the plague spots of 
society, and when need be, smiting the people's 
wrongs with indignant fist. That, too, must be 
a great joy, — the joy of uplifting the fallen and 
removing the stone of stumbling. Now ob- 
serve, the desire of getting redeems itself from 
selfishness by using its strength to improve the 
conditions of all. And so the world grows 
better and life grows sweeter under the creative 
touch of its second creators. We will stay in 
it, just for the joy of doing something worth 
while. 



124 



MAGIC WELLS 



Then another value of life consists in what 
we become. 

A little child lay in its mother's arms two 
thousand years ago in Bethlehem town, — just 
an innocent, artless little boy with the common 
hungers and wants of infancy. Follow his 
footsteps across the hills of Judea and Galilee 
for thirty years and see what he came to be! 
It was a life of supreme joy, notwithstanding 
the gathering shadows of Calvary, because it 
was the life of a soul unfolding into perfect 
bloom. That, I conjecture, is the supreme 
satisfaction of life — just the sense of growth, 
of expanding day by day into larger self-expres- 
sion, into keener appreciation, into wider circles 
of helpfulness, into clearer vision of the human- 
ity of God and the divinity of man. The world, 
too, expands and becomes the warm body of 
the Great Oversoul, and life tense with sacred 
privilege. 

And at the end, what? Why should there 
be an end? The human soul has something 
about it that suggests infinity. The hum- 
blest man feels that nothing in heaven or earth 
can say to him, "Thus far shalt thou come 
and no farther." He can go on and on and new 



U T0 BE OR NOT TO BE" 125 

horizons rise to his wondering vision. And 
the Universe has the same exhaustless capac- 
ity. A thousand mysteries lie all about us 
and we play with them as children play with 
toys, and know not what they are. We walk 
over El Dorados every day and do not suspect 
the boundless wealth beneath our feet. "In 
my Father's house are many mansions." It 
is an endless series of rooms. We pass from 
one to the other, each more wonderful than 
the last; and you cannot conceive of a time 
when the outer wall will be reached and you 
can say, "We have seen it all." 

" Knock and it shall be opened unto you." 
It is the appreciative and understanding knock 
that slides the bolts, and door after door swings 
back — on and on to infinity. The splendor 
and gladness of it all, even amid the stridency 
of angry voices and the cries of pain! 

We hear the hoarse noises of the storm 
and the loud grinding of man's machines. But 
within the silences of nature, we already know, 
there is the low life murmur of the microscopic 
world. The day may come when a new sense 
shall give us finer hearing and we shall listen 
to the symphony of an atom and to the fairy 



126 



MAGIC WELLS 



music of an unfolding rose. So, too, it may be 
given to the finer ear of the spirit to hear be- 
neath the discords of "sweet bells jangled, out 
of tune and harsh," the low and thankful song of 
souls purified by sorrow and a world redeemed 
by its pain. Then we shall understand. 

There is something superbly, tremendously 
great being done in this world. It is the en- 
terprise of Eternity. "God is the senior part- 
ner/' as has been reverently said. You and I 
are not flies on the revolving wheels, but co- 
partners in the divine business. Together we 
are turning out a wonderful product, and to 
every man the profits are what he is able to 
carry away. 

Why should we care to withdraw? 

Our Heavenly Father, we are Thy 
children, Thy helpers — and Thy busi- 
ness is our business. Help us to see its 
divine possibilities and to render, wher- 
ever we are, loyal and interested service. 
Amen. 



THE BEATITUDES 



< 



THE BEATITUDES 



The Beatitudes. — Matt, vii.; John xv. 

JESUS was a preacher. He founded no sect 
and he organized no church. He was a 
preacher of righteousness. 

Without any preliminary training in the 
divinity schools of his time, he began a wander- 
ing ministry of reform, preaching in a simple, 
straightforward way to the common people 
a gospel of the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man; and in the course of three 
years he succeeded in leaving a deeper impres- 
sion on the moral consciousness of humanity 
than has been made by any other man in his- 
tory. 

During these three years he must have 
delivered a great many public discourses and 
given a great many informal talks to his dis- 
ciples. Most of these have been lost and only 
fragments of the others are scattered here and 
there through the Gospel records. There is 
one, however, that purports to be intact and 
complete. It is the "Sermon on the Mount." 

129 



130 



MAGIC WELLS 



Some of our ablest critics, however, affirm 
that even this is not a continuous discourse, 
but is only a skilful compilation (by some 
friend or disciple) of the chief utterance of his 
ministry. Others declare that it is a single 
discourse and has been handed down to us in 
substantially the same form as when it was 
first delivered. Whichever view is correct, 
the truth remains that we have here the sum 
and substance of the teachings of Jesus. 

All his other sayings are virtually elabora- 
tions of the ideas contained in this matchless 
sermon. It is not a set of religious rules or a 
system of doctrinal statements. It is a group 
of life principles, capable of infinite expansion 
and adaptation to the needs of every time and 
place. 

My thought this morning is concerned with 
the introduction to that sermon. 

You will remember that it begins with eight 
short, crisp maxims, commonly known as 
"The Beatitudes." Each opens with the word 
"Blessed" and each closes with a reason why 
blessedness is vouchsafed. 

I suppose, with the exception of the Shep- 
herd Psalm of the Old Testament, they are 



THE BEATITUDES 



131 



the most familiar passages within the lids of 
the Bible. 

They are sweet to the ear of childhood 
and for mid-life and old age their power to 
strengthen and to charm is fresh and unabated. 

And yet, familiar as they are, it is seldom 
that we ever think of their fullness of meaning 
or pause to consider how essential they are as 
daily principles of all true life and conduct. 

Picture for yourselves the scene on that 
bright fresh morning when these words were 
spoken. Jesus seated there on the ground; 
behind him, sloping upward, the green summit 
of the mountain; and far below, the waters of 
Gennesaret dotted with colored sails of fisher- 
men's boats. On either side, from hillside and 
distant valley, gleamed in the sunlight the 
white-walled villages of Galilean folk, w^hile 
overhead hung the deep and silent blue of the 
bending sky. Grouped about his feet were 
the disciples he had chosen, and beyond, in 
an ever-widening circle, stood the peasants 
and villagers come to hear his message. 

They had been preached to before. They 
had heard the harsh "Thou shalt nots" of the 



132 



MAGIC WELLS 



law; they had listened to the endless injunc- 
tions of hair-splitting rabbis; they had caught 
the echoes of the Baptist's strident voice, cry- 
ing the wrath of an avenging God. What, 
then, must have been their surprise and how 
their hearts must have leaped within them 
when there fell from the lips of this strange 
teacher no utterance of penalty or threat, but 
the magical, musical words: "Blessed — blessed 
are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they who 
hunger and thirst after the righteous life." 
It was indeed a new gospel! 

And now, after nineteen hundred years 
these Beatitudes are as fresh and vital as they 
were on that far-away morning among the hills 
of Galilee. 

Take them one by one. 

I. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "The poor 
in spirit" — what does that mean? Does it 
mean the poor-spirited? Does it mean the 
cringing, self-despising soul? Does it mean 
that pale and nerveless character out of which 
all force and fire have fled? Indeed no! Chris- 
tianity lays no chaplet of reward on the brow 
of the limp and lifeless disciple. 



THE BEATITUDES 



133 



The poor in spirit are those who feel their 
need and seek for help, conscious of their own 
shortcomings. They realize their ignorance 
and keep their minds open to the truth, press- 
ing on to some better achievement. 

The sincere, open-minded, truth-seeking 
learners — these, says Jesus, receive the bless- 
ings of his kingdom. 

How true that is to-day. It is true in the 
realm of art or science or business or religion. 
The man who thinks he knows it all, excludes 
the light with the wall of his own conceit. The 
complacent, self-satisfied artist or merchant 
who closes his mind, simply closes the door to 
truth, and the great world passes on and 
leaves him in his self-made tomb. The self- 
righteous believer, blind to his own faults and 
thanking his Lord that he is not a sinner, is in 
reality a petrified mass of religious arrogance. 
He may have a certain bland contentment, 
but he never knows the joy of growth or feels 
the dynamic touch of a new idea or a fresh 
impulse of the spirit. 

It is forever true that only unto the poor 
in spirit, unto those who confess their need 
and with expectant eyes are looking into the 



134 



MAGIC WELLS 



morning, — only unto these is it given to see 
the unfolding revelations of life. On the very 
threshold of his kingdom, Jesus crowns with 
blessing the receptive and open mind. 

II. "Blessed are they that mourn: for 
they shall be comforted." 

How strange and unreal that sounds at 
first! 

Why should mourning hold a blessing? It 
is the very thing from which the heart shrinks 
with instinctive dread. It is joy we want, to 
comfort and ease, and lo! here is a benediction 
on sorrow and pain. But wait. Open that 
word of mourning, until all the hard experi- 
ences of life flow in and fill it full. 

Then ask who the mourners are? Not only 
those who "sigh for the touch of a vanished 
hand and the sound of a voice that is still," 
but those everywhere who are undergoing 
trials, and bearing crosses, and fighting diffi- 
culties, and receiving into their bosoms the 
sharp arrows of daily experience. 

These are they that mourn, and all these, — 
from the heart wrung with grief, to the life 
wrestling with some obstacle in the way, — all 
these shall win some grace from pain and trial. 



THE BEATITUDES 



135 



It is a great promise founded upon a great law 
of life. 

What is that law? It is the law that ordains 
that strength is the result of discipline, and 
character is the fruit of difficulties conquered 
and struggles won. 

Turn back the leaves of history — look 
through to the dawn of creation and behold 
the divine plan. Sorrow, suffering, pain every- 
where, and yet springing from these, as the 
lily grows from the mire, the white virtues 
that make beautiful the human soul. 

Open the book of the world's divine lives — 
its heroes and saints and helpers and saviors — 
and see how their joy in service was the beati- 
tude of pain. 

That man has not begun to live, who has 
not begun to suffer. The life void of stress 
and difficulty, the life that is one wide expanse 
of pleasure and ease, is the deadly desert where 
bleach the skeletons of manhood and woman- 
hood. 

As the diamond is wrought within the 
embrace of the Titanic forces of the earth, so 
courage and endurance and patience, so faith 
and hope and sympathetic love,— those crown- 



136 



MAGIC WELLS 



jewels of the soul. — are created within the 
shadow of sorrow and beneath the pressure of 
trial. And in the possession of these are the 
scales of God adjusted and the heart led to 
find its blessings and its peace. 

III. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall 
inherit the earth." 

That is a prophecy — a prophecy that is 
being fulfilled under our own eyes. To under- 
stand it. we must understand the forces that 
are gradually gaining the ascendency in the 
progress of mankind. At first sight nothing 
could seem more absurd than to say that the 
meek of this world will own it and rule it at 
last. For who are the meek? We commonly 
suppose that they are the mild-eyed, weak- 
hearted people who submit to injustice with- 
out a murmur and let the world walk over their 
prostrate forms without resistance. 

But we are mistaken, the meek are not those 
who give themselves to the Juggernaut of 
tyranny and oppression. 

Go back to Jesus' time and you will under- 
stand. There were two forces at work in his 
day. One held the world in its iron grip, and 
the other still lay in its cradle. The man with 
the large fist was king. 



THE BEATITUDES 



137 



The Roman legions had inherited the earth. 
The helmet over the head was better than the 
idea inside of the head, and the bronze shield 
over the breast was more important than the 
quality of the heart within. 

And there was that other power lying in 
its cradle. It was meekness. Not the puny, 
sickly thing we have believed it to be, but the 
power and majesty and might of simple gentle- 
ness, newly born to a victorious destiny. 

That was meekness in the old days — gentle- 
ness quickened with intelligence and strength- 
ened with the noble virtues of the heart. And 
it was this new force that even in its cradle 
was beginning to challenge the Csesar on 
the throne. It was thought against matter; 
it was moral culture against brutality and 
animalism. 

And Jesus saw — saw with a prophet's vision 
and spoke with a prophet's tongue. "These 
are the men," he said, " these men of the gentle 
and magnanimous spirit, who are to conquer 
the earth and make it their own." 

And you and I are seeing that prophecy 
fulfilled. Slowly but surely through the cen- 
turies, the meek have been winning their way 



138 



MAGIC WELLS 



to power. They are our strong men to-day. 
They are the men we delight to honor — the 
thinkers, the philanthropists, the men who 
stand for justice and love and refinement of 
spirit. 

The day is already here when the braggart 
and the bully and the creatures of blood and 
lust are put where they belong, and the day 
is coming when the "sweetness and light" of 
a purified humanity will be the twin stars in 
the firmament of life, and under their shining, 
the kingdoms of the world will become the king- 
dom of God. 

IV. '''Blessed are they which do hunger and 
thirst after righteousness: for they shall be 
filled." 

Hunger and thirst are the primal wants 
of life. A man must eat and drink or else he 
perishes. And according to the food he eats 
and the water he drinks, so will his body be 
robust and strong or poor and feeble. 

The soul has its hungers and its thirsts. 
And the soul becomes like unto what is given 
it for food and what is given it to drink. The 
world is an indulgent patron. It gives a man 
just what he wants. If his desires are low 



THE BEATITUDES 



139 



and mean, he gets low and mean things. If 
his desires are noble and refined, he gets noble 
and refined things. 

The world is like a great storehouse divided 
into compartments, each of which contains 
some moral or spiritual merchandise. 

On the outside is a door opening into each 
compartment and above the door is written 
the name of the thing within. 

A man passes along and chooses, and his 
choice makes or unmakes him. 

He wants money, and if he chooses 
nothing else, he becomes as hard and metallic 
as the stuff he deals in. He wants ease and 
idleness and he comes out of the compartment 
a loafer and vagabond. He wants the pleas- 
ures of the flesh and he comes out a beast . Or 
he wants something better, and asks for purity 
and love and honesty, and the generous world 
answers his prayer. 

That is the law. What soever a man sows, 
that shall he also reap. At whatever door he 
knocks, it shall be opened unto him. 

Hard and bitter is the reward of those who 
minister to their baser desires, for verily they 
shall be filled. Blessed are they who seek for 



140 



MAGIC WELLS 



the purest and best things, for they too shall 
be filled. 

The seeking always brings the finding. 

No misfortune can stop it, and no fateful 
circumstance can ever stand between. And 
the blessedness of it all is that eternal treasure 
which the rust cannot corrode and the thiev- 
ing years cannot take away. 

V. "Blessed are the merciful: for they 
shall obtain mercy." 

That does not mean that if you are merciful 
unto others, they will be merciful unto you. 
For experience proves again and again that 
people of the most charitable spirit are often 
judged by others with the most relentless 
harshness. It does not mean that you are to 
be generous in your judgments, with the ex- 
pectation of getting something in return. 

But it means this: that the merciful spirit 
creates the atmosphere in which the life fives 
and breathes, as the blossoming tree of June 
encircles itself with a zone of fragrance. 

Mercifulness is its own reward, and un- 
mercifulness is its own punishment. 

The man who judges with cold and heartless 
precision, and with unsympathetic hand thrusts 



THE BEATITUDES 



141 



the knife of criticism into a brother's deed, is 
not a magnanimous or a happy man. He 
lives the detective's life — full of suspicion and 
morbid watchfulness, seeing the diseased mo- 
tives and sickening errors of humanity, and 
surrounded with the iron implements of the 
faultfinder's trade. 

But they who five with "malice toward 
none and with charity for all," live in the 
radiance of their own generous interpretation 
of life, and, in spite of the clanging machin- 
ery of justice, find a quiet joy in doing unto 
others as they would have others do unto 
them. 

That is the blessedness of the merciful 
spirit. 

VI. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for 
they shall see God." 

What a profound utterance that is! How 
strange it sounds among the jarring discus- 
sions over the relation between God and man! 
How like a rebuke it comes to you and me in 
our wordy arguments about the revelations of 
the Most High! 

Can He be seen? Can His voice be heard? 
Was He incarnate in one man, or in all? Is 



142 



MAGIC WELLS 



He here, or is He there? Can He be known, 
or is He forever an inscrutable mystery? 

And now comes Jesus and brushing away 
all these philosophical queries simply says 
* 'Behold the pure in heart — to them is God 
revealed." 

Not to him who watches the stars is the 
full vision given. Not to him who reads the 
secrets of nature is the deeper mystery un- 
sealed. Not to him who pores over a sacred 
book does the knowledge come. 

But to that heart sweet and pure as a child's, 
it is given to enter into the Holy of Holies and 
commune face to face with the Spirit that is 
there. It is true between man and man and 
it is true between man and God. 

You see the form of your friend and you 
behold his face, but in a deeper sense you can- 
not see him or know him until you have made 
yourself a fit medium for the passing of his 
spirit into your own. 

And so men may find God in nature and see 
His footprints in history and behold Him pass- 
ing to and fro in the affairs of the world, but 
not until their hearts are made transparent and 
clean can the ineffable light of His spirit shine 
in and be seen and understood. 



THE BEATITUDES 



143 



Only with the undimmed eye of the spirit 
can spiritual things be discerned. 

VII. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for 
they shall be called the children of God." 

All men in one sense are the children of God. 
They take their life from the same creative 
source and are born into the same vast house- 
hold, but in a far deeper sense, only these are 
His children who are loyal to the household 
order and are at one with the presiding spirit. 

Jesus declares that among these are those 
who stand for brotherhood and peace. 

Those who are trying to heal the feuds of 
men, those who are endeavoring to bridge the 
chasms between nation and nation, those who 
are seeking to soften prejudice and remove 
barriers and hush the harsh noises of hate and 
strife, are working with God and are the chil- 
dren of His heart. 

If our theory of the divine government is 
right, if the Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man are realities, then they who in- 
flame the passions of men and light the torch of 
war are the enemies of the race. 

Slowly — alas, how slowly, this idea has been 
dawning upon the consciousness of the world. 



144 



MAGIC WELLS 



At times the naked sword has been the only 
resort, but every student of history knows that 
most of the cyclones of strife that have wrecked 
the peoples of the earth have leaped from the 
selfish hearts of madmen and fools. But the 
world is rolling out of the shadow. More and 
more we are learning that no question is ever 
settled until it is settled right. 

No dispute between man and man, no 
contention between nation and nation, is ever 
determined until justice succeeds and right 
prevails. 

The soldier cannot do it, the policeman 
cannot do it, the clenched fist cannot do it. 
The peacemaker can. 

The clear-brained, large-hearted man, who 
applies principles and makes peace, he takes 
from the scale of justice the sword which pas- 
sion has flung therein, and puts truth in its 
place. 

VIII. " Blessed are they which are perse- 
cuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven." 

Thus Jesus rounds out the Beatitudes with 
this strong declaration, that those who stand 
bravely for what is right and true are already 



THE BEATITUDES 



145 



enjoying their reward. Not in material posses- 
sions, not in money or rank or power, but in 
the calm consciousness of loyalty to a great 
ideal. "You may be persecuted and cast out," 
he says, "despised and rejected of men, but in 
the midst of it all, to feel that you are faithful 
and true is blessedness and peace." 

What a word that was in the dark days of 
Christianity! How it upheld that lonely band 
of disciples! How it went with martyr to the 
lions or the flame! How it strengthened timid 
hearts everywhere that were ready to faint 
and die! 

And it rings in our ears to-day, with its 
challenge to moral courage and endurance. 
The lions are dead and the flames are extin- 
guished, but hindrances and temptations and 
threats and persecution are still here to weaken 
and destroy. 

If those ragged fishermen at Jesus' feet 
needed courage to be firm, we in our silk and 
broadcloth need it to-day. Courage for right- 
eousness' sake! — courage to suffer defeat for a 
truth, courage to bear a cross for love, courage 
to lose rank and wealth in behalf of honor, 
courage to meet a legion of devils for the sake 
of a pure life. 



146 



MAGIC WELLS 



Oh, the poverty and desolation of that 
soul that destroys its own righteousness! 

Oh, the joy and tranquility of that man 
who bears all things and suffers all things, 
rather than prove false to himself! Traitors 
may wear crowns, cowards grow rich, evil- 
doers win renown, but he holds the approval 
of his own conscience and in God's wide king- 
dom stands fearless and free. 

Lo! the Beatitudes of Jesus, the Nazarene! 

Springing out of a heart profoundly con- 
scious of God and from a mind of marvelous 
spiritual vision, I suppose they are the highest 
and deepest utterances that ever fell from the 
lips of man. Simple, true, universal — they are 
the sum of the deepest religious experiences. 
With power unabated and with meanings 
unexhausted, they have come down to us 
through the centuries, shedding light and life 
on the way; and from us they will pass on to 
untold generations of men — ever ministering 
strength and comfort and peace to the human 
soul. 



THE BEATITUDES 



Our Heavenly Father, we thank 
Thee for the moral vision that transforms 
certain experiences of the soul into 
universal truths and then transforms 
those truths into beatitudes. Grant unto 
us the power to see, to understand, to 
realize, so that life itself shall be one 
great blessedness. Amen. 



TO YOUNG PEOPLE 



TO YOUNG PEOPLE 



THE Girl Scouts have taken for their motto, 
u Be Prepared." I am going to use it as 
the text of my short sermon. If you want a 
Bible text, you will find one almost like it in 
the Gospel of Mark, twenty-fourth chapter 
and forty-fourth verse: "Be ye also ready." 
They are enough alike to mean practically the 
same thing. 

"Be prepared"— "Be ready." For what? 
There is no use in talking about preparation, 
unless we know something about what it is for. 

If you are going to the Equator, there is no 
sense in carrying a supply of Hudson Bay 
blankets. If you are going to the North Pole, 
it would be equally foolish to take a lot of 
palm-leaf fans. You must know something 
of the climate and what the conditions are, 
against which to get ready. 

Suppose you are making a hike into the 
country. It is a lovely day, and you put on 
your party dress and your pretty high-heeled 
slippers (just suppose you did) and then you 

151 



152 



MAGIC WELLS 



start out. But after a while a storm comes up 
and you are wet to the skin, and the slippers 
are pretty no longer. 

And then it turns cold and you have no 
means of lighting a fire, and you say, "I ought 
to have been prepared with matches"; and then 
you become hungry and there is nothing to 
eat, and you say, "I ought to have been pre- 
pared with sandwiches"; and then you lose 
your temper, but that makes matters worse, 
and you say, "I ought to have brought along 
my cheerfulness"; and then you sit down and 
whine and cry, but that doesn't help at all, 
and you say, "I ought to have brought along 
my self-control and pluck and courage." Now 
I am going to leave you there, wet and cold 
and hungry and unhappy, while I say that of 
course the merest tenderfoot wouldn't start 
out that way, but it illustrates what might 
happen if you were ignorant and unprepared, 
and it shows that "being prepared" is a bigger 
thing than you think, — that it means some- 
thing more than walking-shoes and matches, — 
that it means also a state of mind, something 
we call nerve, will-povjer, grit, self-reliance, 
character. 



TO YOVXG PEOPLE 



153 



Now life is a long hike into the country. 
It is a trip into the land of circumstances, 
into the world of things and people and all 
sorts of happenings. I have been on the road 
for sixty-six years, and I confess to you that- 
many times I have been caught without matches 
and without sandwiches and without the neces- 
sary nerve, and so I have learned from experi- 
ence the importance of being prepared. 

You are just starting out. Perhaps some 
of you are wearing the party dresses and 
slippers. Perhaps some of you think it is going 
to be a long lovely day, all golden sunshine. 
Perhaps some of you think that just out of 
town there will be a merry-go-round, where 
you will mount the dappled horses, eat ginger- 
bread, and drink lemonade while the band 
plays. Why shouldn't you think so? You 
are young, and the dream angel is hovering 
over you, as over all young people. 

Now I am not going to wake you from your 
dreams. Dream all you can, and if you are 
dreaming any foolish things, the realities of the 
road will soon take the foolishness out of them. 

But I am going to tell you this: that it is 
a real hike into a real country — a country that 



154 



MAGIC WELLS 



is the roughest and smoothest, the ugliest and 
the loveliest, the most discouraging and the 
most inspiring, of any country in the Universe. 

There will be dust and mud, flower-strewed 
meadows and mountain peaks, cracking thun- 
der-storms and days of blue and gold, long 
stretches of sweet friendship and then at some 
bend of the trail the world will suddenly rise 
up as a giant, brandish his spear, and, like 
Goliath, challenge you to single combat. — 
exactly the kind of country to make a hike 
interesting and worth-while, exactly the kind 
of country in which to develop strong men and 
fine women. 

Now this is my secret, which I tell to you 
on condition you keep it to yourselves. It is 
the finest old world imaginable — an immense 
movie show, and you are the actors — a big, 
wide, lifelong opportunity to conquer circum- 
stances, to improve conditions, and to be 
something fine yourselves. It is perfect fun 
all the way, — the fun of wrestling with diffi- 
culty, the fun of kindling a fire in defiance of 
pouring rain, the fun of marching straight up 
to duty without a whimper, the fun of not 
being ashamed when God or man meets you 



TO YOUNG PEOPLE 



155 



on the road and looks straight into your 
heart. 

So, young people, dream on. Your dreams 
are going to come true, girls; your dreams are 
going to come true, boys, — if, if, if. Now 
comes the point. If what? If you are pre- 
pared to make them come true. 

I have told you what is likely to happen 
on the road. You remember the young person 
with the satin slippers, whom we left up there 
beside the road, wet, hungry, and unhappy? 
There is where your dreams will end, unless 
you have taken the right things along with you. 

You perhaps noticed that I said "if" three 
times. I meant all three, — three "ifs," on 
which full preparation hangs; and unless you 
have all three, you are not perfectly prepared 
and some of the dreams will not come true. 

The first "if" has to do with flesh and 
blood. It is the care and respect for what the 
New Testament writer calls the temple of the 
spirit. You may call it the building or the 
house in which you are to live all your days. 
You can't move into another. You can't buy 
or rent another. 



156 



MAGIC WELLS 



You must therefore take care of it and keep 
it in good repair, else you will find it a very 
uncomfortable place in which to live. 

For the real fun of living is greatly spoiled 
and the real service you dream of doing is 
greatly crippled by not having, so far as pos- 
sible, a good healthy body wrapped around 
your soul. 

In olden times there were religious people 
who thought the body ought to be starved and 
despised. They said it was the enemy of all 
goodness. There was the Hindoo devotee who 
sat and held out one arm night and day, until 
the joints hardened and the finger-nails grew 
in coils around the hand. There was Simeon 
Stylites who stood on the top of a tall pillar for 
thirty-seven years, winter and summer, and 
drew up his scant meals with a rope. There 
were the self-whippers of Rome, who went about 
the streets lashing their own bare shoulders 
until the blood ran down to their heels. And 
even as late as the days of your grandfathers, 
the pale, porcelain girl was regarded as nearest 
an angel, and the boy who was afraid of games 
and hid under the bed was thought to hold 
great promise of being a minister. 



TO YOUNG PEOPLE 



Vol 



That time has gone by and the athletic days 
have come — days when good health, when 
clean, supple, elastic bodies are regarded of 
prime importance and are named as the first 
"if" on the long hike into the wonderful coun- 
try of life. And we are fast finding out, 
from actual experience, that the rosy-cheeked 
girl who can smash the ball into the open 
basket may be an angel, too, and the winning- 
goal kicked by a muscular foot, with a cold 
shower afterwards, holds great promise for a 
live ministry. 

Of course, sweet blood and a clean body 
are not everything, else the prize-fighter would 
be our ideal man, but they are the things 
you will need most on the trip ; and if you have 
them always at hand, you will rejoicingly agree 
with Emerson: "Give me health and a day 
and I will make the pomp of kings ridiculous.'' 

The second "if" has to do with the mind. 
If you are going on the hike just to fill out a 
uniform with your body, just to be a handsome 
pack-animal, just to be a pair of eyes staring 
at the trail in front of your feet, why, you would 
better stay at home. You'll be in the way, 
and you'll never have much of the fun and in- 



158 



MAGIC WELLS 



spiration of the long tramp. If you are going 
to be more than a pack-animal, you must have 
a trained and educated mind, so that you can 
see more than the pack-animal, so that you 
can see the invisible, so that you can stand 
on one of those knolls in Auburndale and look 
back for countless years and see how the glacial 
plows of the ice age threw up those everlast- 
ing furrows, — so that when you buy a bag of 
peanuts, you can see, in that small exchange 
of values, the whole history of the civilizing 
power of commerce, — so that when you see a 
man lose all for something he calls honor, you 
can recall with pride how a poor jungle-man 
back there in the ancient darkness started out 
to be that modern man of honor, and succeeded. 
A pack-animal can't see that. The educated 
mind can. 

There is an empty place inside of the skull 
about two or three inches square. It was de- 
signed expressly for the storage of information 
and the making of mind power. It is simply 
wonderful how much knowledge can be packed 
away in that small space, every bit of which 
will be useful on the journey. You are tired. 
All you have to do is to reach up and take out 



TO YOUNG PEOPLE 



159 



a memory or some fine desire or hope, and you 
are rested. A difficulty confronts you. All 
you have to do is to take out a thought and a 
pinch of reason or common sense, and your 
difficulty is solved. 

That fierce world of which I spoke may 
shake his spear and bellow a challenge. All 
you have to do is to take out a good stiff piece 
of will — trained will, mark you, intelligent 
will, — and smite him straight in the forehead. 
That will cure him of his bluster and bluff. 
That is being prepared in mind, — a skilled, 
cultivated, obedient brain, that sees the glory 
behind common things, that counts riches not 
in dollars but in satisfactions of thought, and 
that meets its difficulties with intelligence and 
resolute grit. That is what education is for — 
to fill that empty space in the head and to 
arrange for instant and victorious service, all 
that it contains. 

The third "if" has to do with the soul. Do 
you know what your soul is? Do you know 
where it is? You know what the brain is and 
where it is, but you couldn't put your hand on 
the spot where the soul is; and if you took a 
man all to pieces, you couldn't find it. 



160 



MAGIC WELLS 



And yet you believe you have one. What 
is it? You don't know and I don't know. 

Perhaps we can make a good guess, if we 
say that it is the girl's best self, the boy's best 
self. It is what you mean when you say: U I 
ought to be clean and straight" ; "Z am ashamed 
of the mean thought or deed"; "I am going 
to stand by the ideal thing, come what may." 
Who is the "I" that is going to do this fine 
service? Why, it is the moral you — the soul 
of you — the most precious and immortal part 
of you. That is what Jesus meant when he 
said, "What does it profit a man, if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul?" 

That is to say: What does it amount to, 
if you get rich and powerful and even learned, 
and are mean and crooked and shabby in 
character? You have lost your best self. 

Now it is this best self that needs to be 
prepared, just as much as your legs and your 
arms and your brain need it. For there are 
on the road moral tight places, just as well as 
physical and mental tight places. All sorts of 
temptations will beset you, and it is often 
harder to smash your way through them than 
it is to scale a wall or solve a problem in algebra, 



TO YOUNG PEOPLE 



161 



Imagine your humiliation, if you were march- 
ing at the head of the line, known as the best 
player on the field and the best scholar of the 
class, and then a wretched little temptation of 
dishonor or impurity or moral cowardice should 
come along and knock you off your feet as if 
you were a baby. And you were a baby, be- 
cause in growing strong in body and strong in 
mind you had forgotten to grow strong in 
character. 

One-third of you, and the best third still, 
in the cradle! 

Of course you want to be a three-thirds 
man and a three-thirds woman — complete, 
well balanced, so that you can walk up to any 
temptation, no matter how big it is, just as you 
walk up to any other difficult job, and say: 
"Not on your life can you down me. Come 
on!" And you will be surprised to find how 
easy it is, if you only know how and if your 
soul is in good working order. 

Three a ifs" then, and when all three are 
fulfilled, you are prepared. My best wishes 
and my confidence go with you on that long 
hike into the wonderful country God has given 
you to explore. 



MAGIC WELLS 



Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee 
for this world and for the privilege of 
living in it. We would so use the 
opportunity of life, as to prove ourselves 
worthy of it. Amen. 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



"And when he came to himself." — Luke xv. 
17. 

1AM not concerned to-day about the essen- 
tial point in the teaching of the parable of 
the Prodigal Son. Jesus told it evidently to 
portray God's forgiving good- will toward all 
repentant waywardness. The chief lesson, 
undoubtedly, is to be found in the attitude of 
the father. 

But I am not thinking of that this morning. 
I am thinking rather of the mental process 
that went on in that young man's mind as he 
lay out there on the bleak hills of the "far 
country," penniless and half starved, watching 
his master's swine. We have given to us a 
brief but graphic picture of his jaunty depar- 
ture from home, arrayed in gay apparel and 
loaded down with the riches which had fallen 
to his share. We already begin to pity him. 
We begin to prophesy his downfall. We feel 
that there is something wrong with his head; 

165 



166 



MAGIC WELLS 



that he is not quite himself; that he is, as it 
were, under the spell of some disguised demon, 
who, with tongue in cheek and wink in eye, is 
leading him along a pathway of flowers that 
ends in the sandy wastes of the desert. Then 
follows the sad story of his mad excesses, his 
exhausted means, the expulsion from the giddy 
world, his fall to the squalor and meanness of 
the swineherd's lot. And then we are told 
"he came to himself." It was as if heretofore 
he had been hypnotized, as if he had been in a 
kind of swoon or insane delusion, which now 
suddenly passes away and he wakes to a realiza- 
tion of his true identity, wakes to an under- 
standing of who he is and what he has done, 
wakes to a remembrance of the old home and 
to a desire to go back and never to leave it any 
more. 

Now, what had really happened in the 
young man's mind? Of course we can take 
the lower, superficial view and say that it was 
an act of cunning prudence. We can say that 
he was physically tired of the hunger and filth 
of his occupation and decided to go back and 
exploit his well-to-do relatives to his personal 
advantage. But the conditions of the parable 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



167 



forbid any such flippant interpretation. On 
the contrary, we are required to believe that it 
was a sincere change of heart. We are expected 
to assume that a serious mental revolution had 
taken place and that whereas heretofore the 
young man had been the victim of one or more 
vagrant, irresponsible selves, now the truer, 
larger self had asserted its authority and had 
opened to him a vision of better things. 

Two thousand years ago, and by Jesus 
himself, is given a hint of the psychology 
question that is vexing the minds of thinkers 
to-day. Even the phrase "coming to one's 
self" has a very modern sound and bears full 
significance in the vocabulary of modern 
philosophy. And so here in this familiar 
parable we come upon the problem of per- 
sonality — a problem which plays an important 
part in the educational and religious theories 
of the present time. 

The ancient Greeks inscribed upon the 
temple of Apollo at Delphi the words "Know 
Thyself." It would seem as if that command 
were the watchword of a multitude of investi- 
gators of our own day. Not only are there 
thousands of biologists exploring the mysteries 



168 



MAGIC WELLS 



of the body, but there is also a great group of 
men who are prying into the secrets of personal 
consciousness and trying to understand the 
complexities of the human soul. 

The conviction is growing that there is a 
great deal more to man than was formerly sup- 
posed. The old Bible statement that we are 
"fearfully and wonderfully made" is estab- 
lishing its claim upon our attention. We are 
beginning to feel toward ourselves and toward 
our fellow-men a new kind of awe and reverence, 
as we discover that there are heights and depths 
of personality yet unexplored, and that in every 
individual there are mysteries of the past and 
possibilities for the future that stretch both 
ways toward the still greater mystery of the 
supreme and universal life. 

It is owing, I think, to this quickened and 
wide spread interest in the mind and soul, 
that we are visited by so many spiritual fads 
and fancies. The new psychology has become 
the unintentional mother of a motley group of 
"ologies" and "isms." It is like a new tract 
of earth that has emerged for the first time 
above the ocean. No sooner is it safely estab- 
lished in the sunlight, than all kinds of vagrant 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



169 



seeds root themselves in its soil and strange 
sea-monsters bask upon its shores. 

One of the results of our modern study of 
personality is the claim made by many lead- 
ing thinkers that the individual is not a single 
homogeneous self, but is, so to speak, a group 
of selves, more or less blended in one life. That 
is to say, there are in every one of us several 
fragmentary personalities, one of which for 
longer or shorter time, appears to dominate 
and subdue all the others. You remember 
that Dr. Holmes says in 'The Autocrat" that 
in every conversation between two men, 
there are at least six persons engaged in the 
talk. That may or may not be numerically 
true, but it suggests what is being very widely 
accepted as a scientific fact, that every man 
may very properly speak of himself as a little 
company of selves with various tastes, dis- 
positions, and activities. 

It is furthermore urged that you do not 
have to resort to hypnotic devices to prove 
this. You can verify it from your own ex- 
perience. Study your personal record for a 
day or a week and you will have the pleasure 



170 



MAGIC WELLS 



or the shame of meeting several members of 
your little kingdom. At one time you seem 
possessed by a demon of anger that makes a 
sorry mess of your dignity and good sense. At 
another time you find yourself under the sweet 
control of a contented and philanthropic spirit. 
Now, you are a shivering coward, afraid of 
some stuffed lion in the way; and again, you 
are as calmly brave as David before the bel- 
lowing giant of Gath. One day you are a 
bitter pessimist and are positive that life is not 
worth living, and another day you feel that the 
Universe is just right and that it is an immense 
privilege to be a part of it. Now, in our com- 
mon speech, we call these various phases of 
experience our moods, our variations of dis- 
position. We say that they are the climatic 
changes of temper, induced by the different 
events of the day or week. But some of our 
psychologists say that this is not true. They 
are not the play of sunlight and shadow on the 
same face in the picture, but they are actually 
different faces appearing and reappearing upon 
the canvas. 

But there is something else to be observed 
as you study your own nature. It is a some- 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 171 



thing of supreme importance. Suppose you 
assume that there are several of you. Suppose 
you observe them in your daily conscious- 
ness, now one, now the other asserting itself in 
thought and behavior; who is it, let us ask, 
who is it or what is it that does the observing? 

Are you not conscious of still another self, 
larger and more inclusive than the others, 
that seems to be standing outside watching 
them, counting them, criticising them, ap- 
plauding them? While you are listening at 
the present moment, you are going over in 
your mind the different personalities which 
I have described and which you wonder if 
you possess. Who is it that is going over 
them? Who is it that wonders? 

There are times when you fall so com- 
pletely into the possession of one of these 
smaller selves, that you lose all consciousness of 
the one watching outside. It is only afterward 
that the presence of the watcher is seen and 
felt. There are other times when the watcher 
seems to be on the guard all the time, and while 
the lesser personalities are having their way, is 
continually sounding the word of rebuke or 
encouragement. What is it? You may call it 



172 



MAGIC WELLS 



conscience, or moral sentiment — anything you 
please. I like to give it the name I have already 
used and call it the real or the larger self. 

It moreover seems to be something that 
grows from more to more. With freedom and 
encouragement, it develops in strength and 
beauty, it gains in control of the lesser selves, 
it subdues the evil propensities and keeps in 
the front rank the things that make for good. 

What is the difference between the savage 
and any great, good man of to-day? It is a 
difference in the size of personality, a difference 
in the development and administrative power 
of the true self. The savage is within what his 
world is without. It is a lawless kingdom. 
All the lower impulses are abroad and revel in 
moral anarchy. The greater self is still in the 
cradle. But in your good, great man it has 
grown into commanding power. It has mastered 
his life. It has caught all the vagrant passions 
and lawless impulses of his nature and harnessed 
them to noble and useful ideals. 

It is therefore this evolution of personality 
that measures the advance of man up the 
stairway of the ages, 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



173 



Little by little the real self emerges from the 
riot and confusion of the lower nature, and in 
like proportion life sweeps on to better days. 
And it is to this that all the leaders of the race 
have made their appeal. They have discovered 
its meaning for themselves. They have found 
that only in this growth of personality can life 
become superior to its own experiences. And, 
learning it for themselves, they have tried to 
teach it to others. What is the essence of the 
best religious teaching of the world but the 
attempt to put the divine life into power? 
What is the burden of all moral reform but the 
effort to wake up the sleeping nobilities of the 
soul? 

Go read the story of Buddha and learn how, 
when at last the true self enthralled him, the 
pleasure and selfishness of the other life lost 
their charm. And the message which he has 
given to all time is the moral serenity which 
blesses the man who has come to his real self. 

Socrates teaches the same great lesson. He 
called the larger self his "daimon," his inspir- 
ing genius. See how it calmed his fears, stead- 
ied his purpose, transformed the death chamber 
into a council of the gods, as the poisoned cup 



174 



MAGIC WELLS 



was mixed. Jesus preaches from the same 
text. "I am not come, he says, to do my own 
will, but the will of Him who sent me." It is 
as if he had said, "I am come not to serve the 
little desires and fears and prejudices of Jesus 
the Nazarene carpenter, but I am come to try 
to realize the great vision God has given me to 
see — I am come to be true to my diviner self — 
to work out the grander possibilities of my 
soul." This is what he meant when he pleaded 
for the liberation of God in man and the sur- 
render of the life to the highest and best motives. 
And when he called those rude fishermen to 
discipleship, note how he seemed to evoke 
within them a new kind of manhood, which 
transformed their attitude toward life and filled 
them with a cheerful fortitude amid all perils. 

And shall we not say that Paul underwent 
the same change? We call it "the great con- 
version, " — the transformation of a persecutor 
of the Christians into a zealous follower of 
Christ. It was in reality the discovery of his 
larger personality. Again and again in his 
letters he refers to the struggle between the old 
self and the new. But little by little the new 
power prevailed, and we see him rising out of 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



175 



a world beset with personal anxieties and doubts 
and petty hatreds, into the serene atmosphere 
of his real life. He called it the Christ life in 
his heart. "It is no longer / that live/' he 
says, "but Christ Jesus that liveth in me." 
He had found himself. He had become a man 
in whom personality had developed. 

And now we have the key to the spiritual 
change in the Prodigal Son. He had come to 
himself. Heretofore he had been under the 
rule of the lower forces of his nature. He had 
been like a straw tossed about by the waves 
and eddies of some shallow muddy stream. 
He did not know who he was or where he was 
going. He did not care. And now comes the 
revelation. It is the vision of his larger self. 
He feels the lift, the thrill, the moral intoxica- 
tion of that discovery. And does he surrender 
to the new power? No! There is really no 
surrender about it. He simply becomes that 
new power; becomes his truest and his best. 
It is himself after all. The thing that said 
"I" and "me" in the old days was not the actual 
"I" and "me." The reality has now come 
into its own, and the "I" and "me" are pro- 



176 



MAGIC WELLS 



nounced by the same lips, but rise up out of a 
different and nobler spirit. 

And this, I think, is the key to all moral 
changes of heart and mind. Sometimes the 
change is sudden and unexpected. It is like 
a stranger, who enters the doorway unan- 
nounced and takes possession of the house- 
hold amid storm and excitement. 

But oftener and far safer it is a gradual 
growth from within. It is as if the stranger 
were already a member of the household, born 
there, little and unnoticed. But in time it 
expands, grows in influence, and at last subdues 
all turbulent elements to its gentle will. 

In either case it is the soul finding its own 
— coming to itself. 

In far northern seas, when summer comes 
and the ice begins to break up, one often sees 
a huge iceberg majestically making its way 
through the floating cakes and directing its 
course straight into the face of the driving 
wind. It moves steadily on as if in defiance 
of the laws of nature. But seven-eighths of 
the great berg are buried in the ocean depths 
and there, caught in the profounder currents 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



177 



of the sea, it is borne calmly forward through 
all the turmoil and opposition of the surface 
world. So it is with the life that has found 
itself, that has come into the enlargement of 
its own personality. It goes down beneath 
the surface of daily living and is swayed and 
directed by the invisible tides that run in the 
quiet deeps of the soul. 

You have known such lives. There are 
those here to-day who doubtless have won the 
secret of the larger self. You bear and suffer, 
you do and dare, you encounter the average 
difficulties of the common lot, and yet you 
meet all and do all, you breast your way through 
all with a composure and a confident power 
that seem strange and unnatural to the watch- 
ing world. It is not strange. It is not un- 
natural. You have, on the contrary, given 
yourself to nature and are fulfilling the proph- 
ecies of your larger being. You have simply 
taken the reins into your own hands and driven 
straight on, in the full assurance that no harm, 
in this world or any world, can come to him 
who keeps his poise and follows the plain road. 

There may be others who have not yet 
given themselves to the full supremacy of the 



178 



MAGIC WELLS 



best self. You are still a divided kingdom, with 
its tumults and rebellions. 

You are afraid of public opinion. That is 
not you. It is one of the little selves screaming 
with terror. You are disheartened over a 
failure. It is the little self of cowardice. You 
are made silly with the world's applause. It is 
the little self of vanity got into power. You 
are fretted and anxious over your affairs. You 
are despondent and pessimistic. You are 
beset by temptations to do what you know you 
ought not to do. Again, it is only one of the 
poorer little selves piping in your brain. It is 
so near to you and so intimate that you think 
it is yourself. And you will always think so, 
until you take the real self (which you have 
seen in your better moments) and put it into 
effective service. 

It really comes down to the simple question, 
"Will you or won't you." You can will to 
come to yourself. You can wake up when 
you please. You can say, 'These things 
shall not possess me," and it will happen just 
as you say. 

Our Christian Science friends are right 
when they quote, u As a man thinketh, so is he." 



COMING TO ONE'S SELF 



179 



Our Emmanuel friends are right when they say 
that what many of us ailing ones need is simply 
to take hold of ourselves and shake ourselves 
into consciousness and sanity. It is folly to 
try to criticise a spiritual difficulty into nothing 
or to grumble a moral ailment out of existence. 
You cannot subdue any one of your petty 
selves by thinking about it, or by rebuking it 
with periodic severity. If the room is dark, 
you raise the curtains and let in the sunlight. 
If the air is bad, you open the windows and 
from the great atmospheric reservoir the purify- 
ing stream pours in. The best way to drive 
out the devil is to crowd him out with diviner 
life. The best way to overcome the meaner 
selves is to turn loose the greater self, is to let 
the nobler impulses have full swing, is to let 
yourself believe that there is within you a kind 
of largeness and dignity of spirit which makes 
it impossible to be mean, a kind of wealth of 
affection that makes it absurd to hate, a kind 
of personal confidence which lifts you out of 
the power of your fears, and a kind of delight 
in letting this great nature within you have 
command, so that all other delights in com- 
parison seem trivial and cheap. 



180 



MAGIC WELLS 



"And when he came to himself, he went 
back to the father's house." 

Our Heavenly Father, open our 
eyes that we may see the vision of our 
own spiritual possibilities, and then 
send us forth to service to win strength 
and courage to be our best. Amen. 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters." — Gen. i. 2. 

UNIVERSAL chaos shrouded in darkness 
and dripping with vapors from a lifeless 
sea! Then the spirit of God steals over the 
black confusion, and behold the red dawn of 
the first day! Thus the ancient poet pictured 
to himself the emergence of the primitive world 
into light. 

And that creative process, once started, 
rolls on with majestic precision in ever ascend- 
ing scale, until seasons caress the valleys into 
verdure, roses bloom and birds sing, and man, 
with the breath of God in his nostrils, looks 
across the loveliness of Eden to the mysterious 
beckoning of the dim, unknown future. 

That is an impressive picture, and deeply 
significant, of the nude Adam standing erect 
amid the lush newness of the fertile earth, and 
gazing, with strange yearning, toward the 
adventure of far horizons. And in his nostrils 

183 . 



184 



MAGIC WELLS 



the breath of God! God, not now alone, but at 
his side a strong son of the spirit, who in time 
is to become a second creator in taming the 
wild elements given to his keeping and in build- 
ing his soul into a splendid civilization. 

We are here to-day because that man's 
spirit moved upon the face of the round world, 
and extended into the unknown the acres of 
the first paradise. It is very wonderful — this 
seething, inexhaustible energy of the human 
soul and the eager translation of it into a visible 
world superimposed upon the primitive, visible 
world. We can but stand in awe before its 
tremendous power and treat with fearsome 
respect the deep current of its going — a going 
so impatient and so swift in these modern 
days. 

In the past century, it was directed upon the 
hidden facts of earth and sea and sky. The 
complexities of matter were unraveled and the 
pent-up strength of the universe was harnessed 
into service. We exploited the rich globe to 
our advantage, and restored the old mills of the 
gods by moving them out of the clouds to 
solid ground, and furnished them with roaring 
furnaces and cunning machines. We discovered, 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



185 



to our surprise, that our own brain was more 
masterful than we dreamed, and that the 
supreme power in life was a man's thought 
breaking its way into the treasure-vaults of 
nature. We learned that these rich resources 
needed but the compelling hand of the spirit 
and the right application, to make them our 
useful servants. 

In this century, a new discovery is dawning 
upon us. It is the oncoming tide of social 
evolution. It is the creeping wash of the great 
ocean of human emotion, sustained and pushed 
on by the winds of lawless freedom. It is the 
mobilization of the spiritual forces of the 
multitude — forces freshly revealed, forces raw 
and crude and often primitive and selfish, forces 
made up of passion and greed and discontent, 
of new ideas of justice and human rights, and 
an ever-growing consciousness of power, and 
yet awfully sincere and profoundly in earnest. 

As the earth disclosed to us at last its long- 
hidden energies, so the social world now bursts 
open its gates and a new power pours forth 
into human affairs. It is Adam already in 
motion, deserting the confines of the old Eden, 
striding toward the horizons actually in sight, 



186 



MAGIC WELLS 



and asking "Why?" at every step. This new 
movement has its omens. On its front are 
written menaces to social order, and likewise 
promises of better days and a clearer under- 
standing of the social compact. 

Which alternative will come to pass, will 
depend upon the justness of our interpretation 
and the wisdom of our handling of this tre- 
mendous power. In the days of our ignorance, 
we saw only disaster in the electrical energy 
which our hands had unloosed from a universe 
seemingly so inoffensive before. Then wisdom 
came, and that of which we were afraid became 
our friend and co-worker. We are now dis- 
traught by the approaching shadow of stalwart 
Adam — a figure, whose heart our own teachings 
have set on fire. May it not be that as he 
draws nearer, we shall learn to understand him 
and he us, and together save his turbulent soul 
to the making of a more sincere human brother- 
hood and a more stable civilization? 

The only permanent way of suppressing 
rebellion is to extract the right of it and join 
that right with the right of that against which 
it rebelled. The two rights cannot quarrel. 

Most thoughtful people are agreed that the 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



187 



time has come to relax somewhat our conquest 
of matter and attend to the administration of 
an equally fathomless source of energy — and 
that is the awakened spirit of the common 
people. At its best estate, this spirit is civil- 
ization. It is enlightened democracy. It is 
the social machinery working smoothly and 
with noiseless articulation. At its worst estate, 
it is barbarism. It is blind anarchy. It is 
the social machinery smashed and turned into 
a junk-heap. 

We are witnessing in this country, and for 
that matter in every country, this tremendous 
power divided against itself. It is as if a great 
stream were split in twain, one portion follow- 
ing the old channel of law and order, and the 
other, in seeking a new channel, losing self- 
control and devastating vineyard and field. 
The question is being asked, which branch will 
prevail and absorb the other? How are we 
going to control this barbaric energy, this new- 
born spirit of freedom, and redeem it from its 
own ignorance and folly? 

The wise answer puzzles us all. Obviously 
the first thought is suppression. Why not dam 
up the broken barriers with the masonry of 



188 



MAGIC WELLS 



force? You may do that in the ease of run- 
ning water, but when human aspirations once 
get started and realize their freedom, mere 
physical power is only temporary restraint. 
Force is the emergency remedy. There are 
times when the social order is caught in a weak 
moment, and the lawless spirit seizes its op- 
portunity. Then the strong hand of coercion 
is needed to discipline and restore. 

We have recently witnessed in our own 
midst a disgraceful example of disloyalty to 
public safety, of rebellion against constituted 
authority. The wonder that it could have 
happened and the shame that it did happen 
are only deepened by the superficial reasons 
offered to justify it. It was the courageous 
firmness of one man, using the arm of force 
sleeved in khaki, that checked the outbreak 
and saved perhaps every city in the land from 
riot and disorder. I doubt whether any event 
in our history ever gave more satisfaction to 
a responsible citizenship, as the overwhelming 
endorsement, a few weeks ago, of that man's 
fearless attitude and wise action in a danger- 
ous emergency. But it was an emergency, 
and the prompt exercise of the fist of power 
choked the scream of the tiger. 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



189 



But Governor Coolidge did not convert the 
tiger into the lamb. He did not change the 
heart of a striking policeman or turn a hoodlum 
into a trustworthy citizen. He merely drove 
them back into the shadow, and there they still 
lurk; and so long as they remain there, sullen, 
unregenerate, misguided, thinking liberty is 
license and social order the invention of tyrants, 
so long must physical force be ready in the 
hand of the good citizen. But it is clear, I 
think, that suppression is only an expedient. 
It does not cut the root of the trouble. 

We do not want to cut the root, for under- 
neath all this disorder and unrest is a vague, 
undefined upreach for larger life. That spirit 
of upreach is drunk with selfishness, cruelty, 
the mob-temper, all that orderly society fears 
and hates. We do not want to kill the germ 
of freedom in our process of reformation. We 
want to save the drunken desire by sobering 
its intemperance, giving it constructive tools 
and directing it in the orderly ways of the 
largest freedom. 

Of course, in the long run, education is the 
supreme remedy — education not in logarithms 
and ancient classics, but education in self- 



190 



MAGIC WELLS 



control, in vision — education to see the common 
welfare — education to feel justice — justice not 
only to the important u me," but also the 
equally important "him." 

To this end, various means are already being 
adopted. Organizations and institutions are 
rising, ostensibly to serve this new need of 
discipline and light. Some of them only feed 
the fires of sedition and further impair the 
sense of responsibility. Others are motived by 
worthy desire and are acting on lines of 
far-seeing intelligence. But all, or nearly all, 
are based on the theory that man is a hungry 
stomach and a calculating brain. All assume 
that when the hands are full of good things, and 
the world is made a pleasant place in which to 
live, the true aim is reached and everybody 
will be satisfied. At the core it is a gospel 
of materialism and takes into account only the 
creature comforts of earthly existence. It is 
at this point and from this quarter that the 
church now receives its baptism of criticism 
and sometimes denunciation. It is charged 
that, although it has had a fruitful past, it is 
now behind the times, and so infirm that it 
is blind to the new morning service; that it is 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 191 



bending the knee to worldly prosperity, is out 
of sympathy with the masses, and offers no 
leadership for these worthy aspirations of the 
people. Why? Because, forsooth, it does not 
transform itself into an amphitheatre for social 
gladiators and denies that the summum bonum 
of life is a square meal and unmeasured freedom 
to do as you please. 

On the contrary, any church conscious of 
its true mission and mindful of its own vitality 
welcomes the unyoked energy of the people 
and approves every desire to widen the privi- 
lege of life, but it pushes the emphasis of its 
sanction beyond these motives of worldly gain, 
to the spiritual hunger and ideal satisfaction 
of the soul. It is the only institution that does 
so with single aim and unswerving purpose. 

Reformers may very wisely gather to pro- 
mote the material interests of the million and 
to secure civic and industrial justice for all, 
but they widely err in asking the church to 
transfer its emphasis back from character and 
religion to the nearer objects of material pros- 
perity. For they who count the inner com- 
pulsions of the human heart and forget to in- 
clude the religious sentiments, are leaving out 



192 



MAGIC WELLS 



some of the essential things that in all times 
have lifted and inspired the race to higher 
levels. These other motives that reach and 
cry for better social conditions, let it be 
repeated, are important and worthy; but to 
leave man to infer that he is in a godless 
world and is but a handful of dust, is dis- 
abling the strongest and noblest incentives of 
life. 

Yet the call goes up for the church to aban- 
don its specific function and become a forum 
for economic vagaries and socialistic doctrines. 
When it responds to that call, it abdicates its 
religious office, and becomes, it may be, an in- 
teresting and useful platform, but not a church. 
It has been tried again and again, only to pass 
from a house of worship to a house of secular 
debate. Would it not be better to strip off 
the disguise and frankly say, "Here is being 
made the experiment of dispensing with re- 
ligion"? Then we should clearly understand; 
and if the experiment failed, the failure could 
not be labeled, "The failure of the church." 

I am aware that this position is open to 
misinterpretation. It would seem as if the 
church were made to stand over against the 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



193 



practical life, and that religion must piously 
draw back from contact with worldly affairs. 
On the contrary, religion, if it be worth any- 
thing, must touch every interest of life; and it 
desires, above all things, to bless every noble 
emotion of the soul, and to share in helping 
and purifying every impulse toward better 
conditions in the world. But in doing that 
effectually, it must keep its own founts of 
inspiration close to the throne of God. It 
must not dig pools below, where surface waters 
collect and stagnate, but rather send its living 
springs coursing down from the High Place. 

The church trusts to those whom it inspires 
to bear that inspiration wherever they pass, 
in forms of light and hope and character and 
consecrated interests. There is no other way 
of pouring the life of the church into the life of 
the world. And men need that quickening 
revelation and the steadying power of that 
influence. Adam needs to know that he lives, 
not by bread alone, but by the optimism of 
spiritual manhood and the faith of a divine 
destiny. He needs to know that he is co- 
worker with a power greater than himself, and 
that, whatever horizons he dares to cross, he 
"cannot be where God is not." 



194 



MAGIC WELLS 



To feel that he is merely a clay image 
marooned on a planetary cinder, flings him 
back to the ape and the tiger. To look up at 
the white stars in the darkened heavens, to 
read the message of his own heart yearnings, 
and to discern in both nothing more than 
"omnipotent matter rolling on relentlessly to 
sure doom, pitiless and dark," is not a philos- 
ophy that exalts the soul or saves it from the 
lust of selfish power. That is stark pessimism; 
and where it prevails, the high virtues lose their 
enthusiasm and the songs of inspiration are 
hushed. 

You cannot control the masses with that 
philosophy, or educate them or lift them to 
happier visions. You need religion to do that 
— the sense of God, the consciousness of eternal 
things, the full acceptance of the supremacy 
of the moral law, the vivid hope of some larger 
life into which the lesser life opens at last. 

Here is the opportunity of the church, to 
stand explicitly for these spiritual realities and 
to open wide its doors, so that its altar fires 
may be clearly seen from the crowded thorough- 
fares of life. 

The church indeed has its imperfections, 



THE ADVENTUROUS ADAM 



195 



— it is human and sometimes steps aside from 
the wisest course; but the thing it is really and 
sincerely trying to do, is to enlarge the spiritual 
experiences of mankind and to give the human 
soul a nobler conception of its own nature and 
destiny. For it knows its psychology. It 
knows that these surface currents that sway 
the multitude, to and fro, do not tell the whole 
story. Deep below and as yet untouched are 
forces which, once awakened and nourished, 
become stronger than bodily hunger and phy- 
sical well-being. 

Your man with the rough hand and inflam- 
mable brain is fundamentally religious. If it is 
not manifest, it is because it is screened by these 
secondary passions. It is for the church to 
remove that screen and reveal the man to 
himself. 

How that is to be done, no one seems defi- 
nitely to know. It certainly cannot be done by 
shelving the Sermon on the Mount and making 
the church unreligious. Until more light comes, 
it is for the church to hold in plain sight its 
opportunity and to mobilize its own religious 
forces for education and service. Already that 
is being done in all faiths of Christendom. A 



196 



MAGIC WELLS 



new wave of enthusiasm is moving upon the 
churches, — a revival of interest, not in the 
salvation of souls in another world, but in this 
world; an interest in the strong obligation of 
religious people to seize upon these inner sources 
of power and direct them into safe channels of 
citizenship and service. 

What is better at this time, than for all men 
and women who confess the worth of religion, 
to put new life into the church, to build up its 
community influence, and to become them- 
selves, by their sympathy and fairness and 
largeness of vision, messengers of light and 
leadership in the darkness and disorder of a 
troubled world! 

Our Heavenly Father, lead us into a 
fuller appreciation of the meanings of 
our times. Give us to watch, with 
understanding eyes, the upward struggle 
of man, and where we can serve, may we 
accept the responsibility with consecra- 
tion and courage. Amen. 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



"And the door was shut." — Matt. xxv. 10. 

A YEAR of time presents to the observing 
mind a series of doorways — doorways of 
opportunity, of privilege, of experience. Some 
of these doors are wide open or hang on easy 
hinges. Others appear to be tightly closed and 
locked from the inside. 

A year of life, for the observing mind, con- 
sists of testing these doorways, — of entering 
the open ones and trying to unbolt the closed 
ones. 

One curious thing about these doors is that 
the ones that stand open to some people are 
shut in the faces of other people. Those that 
are hard locked to me, readily yield to your 
appealing touch. Another curious thing is that 
it doesn't make much difference whether we 
are outside or inside. For the man who enters 
the open doorway is straightway confronted 
by inner doors that challenge his power to 
unlock. So that whether he be within or with- 

199 



200 



MAGIC WELLS 



out, he is bound to meet obstacles and undergo 
the experience of being baffled. 

Both kinds of doors belong equally to the 
house of life. The experience of being shut 
out is quite as significant as that of getting in. 

Stevenson sings in his "Verses to Chil- 
dren" : — 

The world is so full of a number of things 
I am sure we should all be as happy as kings. 

Yes, but the trouble is, that when we ask 
for the things, the world is very apt to refuse 
to let us have them. It has a way of display- 
ing its wares in charming fashion, and then 
when we come to buy, of declaring that we 
cannot have them at any price. So far as we 
are concerned, they are merely for exhibition 
purposes. We may look at them and let our 
desires play about them, but we are not allowed 
to grasp them with the hand. So many things 
are dangled just beyond our reach or screened 
from our possession by inflexible bars. 

That is one of the most tantalizing aspects 
of life, to be tormented by our own vision and 
to be mocked by the unattainable. And it is 
no respecter of persons. 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



201 



The poor pedestrian breathing the dust of 
the rich man's chariot wheels is no worse off 
than the gentleman sitting on the cushions. 
The only difference is, one is walking toward 
the unattainable and the other is driving 
toward it. 

Starving Lazarus looks longingly through 
the windows of Dives' house and sees him at 
the sumptuous feast. But Dives is not so com- 
fortable as he looks. He, too, is pinched with 
hunger — hunger for something which, even with 
all his boundless wealth, life seems to deny. 
And then poor ignorant Lazarus skulks away 
into the darkness and starts a revolution. 

The next day Dives is the pauper and 
Lazarus is sitting at the festal board, but both 
are still hungry and dissatisfied, as before. 

The world is just as full as ever of unreach- 
able things, and though Lazarus and Dives 
have changed places, life's irony still continues 
and grasping hands still reach in vain for the 
dangling prizes. 

It always will be so. For no mechanical 
rearrangement of conditions — be it social or 
political or industrial — can ever check or dis- 
turb the working of this system of refusal. 



202 



MAGIC WELLS 



The only way to check it is to check human 
nature and destroy in the human soul the power 
to dream dreams and to see visions. It is 
inherent in the heart of things and is the univer- 
sal factor. 

We sometimes divide the human family 
into two groups. We call one the ''haves" 
and the other the "have-nots." The "haves" 
are distinguished by certain things which are 
called possessions and which serve as conven- 
tional symbols of success. The "have-nots" 
are those who have failed to "'arrive'' and whom 
the God of fortune has overlooked. But a 
moment's reflection will convince you how very 
superficial this line of division is. It is a mere 
scratch on the surface of the social world. The 
ultimate fact is that there is only one group, 
and it is made up entirely of the "have-nots." 
If the measure of success is the fulfillment of 
every desire, then we all are failures. 

So far as we can determine, that is pre- 
cisely what we were predestined to be from 
the foundations of the world. 

Of course there are degrees of failure. When 
we think of the "shut doors," we sympatheti- 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



203 



cally recall those people to whom fate has been 
the most conspicuously cruel and malicious. 
They make a vast company of unfortunates, 
— the crippled little children, the imperfect 
and deficient, the unprivileged slaves of hered- 
ity or circumstance, those who have been 
forced to drink every day of the cup of bitter- 
ness, those whose souls have been doomed to 
walk the way of life alone, those who have 
been defeated on the very edge of victory, 
those whose arms are empty and whose hearts 
are scarred with sorrow and despair. What 
a sad-eyed, pathetic multitude it is, that looks 
up to God and asks for more abundant life! 

Mingled with them, there is another com- 
pany, marching the same way and praying the 
same prayer. We call them the strong, the 
beautiful, the victorious. But they, too, are 
defeated, broken, disappointed. They have 
attained what others have failed to do, but 
the very attainment discloses prospects and 
privileges far beyond their reach. They have 
found what they sought, only to discover that 
the object of their search melted away in the 
dazzling light of infinite possibilities beyond. 
We speak of "the satisfactions" of life. It is 



204 



MAGIC WELLS 



utterly misleading. It is only a pleasing name 
which we give to certain acquisitions. 

There is no such thing or condition as 
satisfaction for the live and healthy soul, for 
the moment of satisfaction is the birth-moment 
of dissatisfaction. 

We are never so conscious of not having 
as when we are conscious that we have. A 
hunger that is never satisfied, a thirst that is 
never quenched — that seems to be the spiritual 
constitution of the human soul. 

It is not so with the animal world. Your 
horse and your dog are never haunted by the 
ideal, never disquieted by the promises of the 
moral vision. But you, the child of the spirit, 
seem to be set aside from the rest of creation, 
to be tantalized by your own progress, and at 
every step, to see the attainment of the hour 
consumed in the flame of some new desire. 

What a strange, perplexing fate it is, that 
seems to decoy us along the way by fair 
promises and then laughs at our dismay, when 
we discover that the prize which has been 
given us is only an irritant to still deeper 
yearnings of the soul! 

It is one of the mysteries to which the 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



205 



human mind returns again and again. It is an 
age-long problem — a problem which involves 
all the deeper meanings of life and experience. 

What does it mean — this eager pursuit of 
what does not satisfy and yet our constant 
surrender to the fascinations of pursuing? 

Some tell us that it does not mean any- 
thing, and that the best solution of the problem 
is to be silent and not ask foolish questions. 
The pagan philosopher said that this world is 
a toy house of the gods, and we are the dolls, 
put here expressly to be lured and tormented 
and fooled for the amusement of Olympic 
spectators. 

The modern Nietzsche says the same thing 
when he intimates that this world is one of the 
cosmic theatres, where comedy and tragedy 
are so grotesquely mixed, that the whole 
spectacle becomes a continuous and stupen- 
dous vaudeville performance. Huxley main- 
tained that moral sentiment is not at the heart 
of the Universe — that is to say, love and good- 
will and justice and moral vision are home 
products and have no existence elsewhere. 
The cosmic order is absolutely indifferent and 



206 



MAGIC WELLS 



is not interested in our performance. And 
Maeterlinck, whom we all love for his poetic 
insight into life, says there is nothing spiritual 
back of the world, and that we have created 
with our own hands our gods of righteousness 
and divine purpose. 

This is the same as saying that there is no 
moral design within the wheels, and that doors 
are shut or opened by the winds of chance. 

It is indeed disheartening if it be true. It 
solves the problem by the process of despair. 
Better, indeed, was the old Stoic theory of the 
simple defiance of circumstance — of escaping 
the shut doors by ignoring all doors and prac- 
ticing the art of indifference — or even that 
still older solution coming from the intro- 
spective East, that the only refuge from the 
torments of desire is to kill all desire and extin- 
guish the power of the soul to see. 

There is another explanation better still. 
It rises out of that invincible optimism that is 
in every healthy nature. It is Christian phi- 
losophy applied to both kinds of doors — the 
open and the shut. It may not explain all or 
solve every mystery, but it goes deeper to the 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 207 



core of life than a doctrine of despair, and fills 
the soul with a courage which no other philos- 
ophy can furnish. What does it say? It says 
that we are utterly mistaken as to the nature 
of the open door and the closed door, We 
have been assuming that life's disappoint- 
ments and life's satisfactions were separate and 
opposite things and had no relation whatever 
with each other. 

We have been assuming that the refusals 
could only retard the soul and the fulfillments 
could only promote its growth. We are wrong. 
We have missed the significance of both. The 
deeper truth is that the fulfillment is not a 
complete fulfillment and the refusal is not a 
complete refusal. 

Your success is not cut off abrupt and clean, 
but it ravels out and forward into something 
else. Your disappointment is not cut off 
abrupt and clean. It, too, ravels out and up- 
ward into something else. 

There is no finality about either. Each 
leads out into some new revelation, some 
deeper understanding, some wider vision. 

Yesterday you realized some dream — some 
plan, some hope, some desire was fulfilled. 



208 



MAGIC WELLS 



To-day you are not contented. The old unrest 
is in your heart. Yesterday's victory has 
struck out a new quest and given you the 
spiritual pain of a new desire. 

Yesterday your dream did not come true. 
Fate refused you. Your plans fell to pieces, 
the cup of joy was dashed from your hps, and 
your desires come back empty and unsatisfied. 

To-day, what? To-day you are standing 
in the light of the new knowledge which that 
failure has shed. You are reading a message 
from the profoundest experiences of the whole 
human race. The tears blind you, but you 
read, — and word by word, line by line, there 
is revealed to you a vision of the uncharted 
possibilities lying beyond your sorrow or your 
defeat. The pain of your shattered dream is 
but the travail of a new birth of the powers of 
the soul. 

Place the two disappointments side by side, 
— the disappointment that follows success and 
the disappointment that follows failure. They 
are practically the same. They are dual forces 
— unlike in outward aspects, but in nature 
fundamentally alike and working toward the 
same end. Both are educative; both are 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



209 



expansive in their power; both are prophetic of 
something larger and better beyond. 

It is easy to believe this of the disillusion- 
ments of victory, but it is difficult to see a 
promise in the blows of defeat. It is obvious 
that our fulfillments are not final. We can 
understand how one conquest leads on to 
another, even if every one brings with it its 
painful surprises. But what prophecy is there 
in defeat? 

What are a hundred misfortunes you can 
name, but the sharp, staccato refusals of life. 
What promise is there in that hard, rasping 
"No"? 

The stream does not end at the brink of the 
fall. It seems so, as you look at it from above. 
But follow it down and behold, it is still flow- 
ing toward the distant sea, perhaps roiled and 
confused at first, but actually purified by the 
plunge into the atmospheric abyss. 

So life's refusals often seem to engulf the 
soul and end its progress, but out of the smother 
and tumult it swings forward once more, 
strangely braver and sweeter, as if it had won 
a victory. And it had. 



210 



MAGIC WELLS 



Always an angel of prophecy is standing on 
the edge of the night. Have you not heard 
her voice? Have you not seen beneath her 
fillet the prophetic gleam of her eye as you 
passed by her into the darkness? And as you 
emerged and faced the fresh wonder of the 
dawn, have you not realized what that kindly, 
inflaming look signified? 

The angel knew — what you did not know — 
that beyond your horizon the morning star 
was riding up the eastern sky — knew it because 
she knew the history of human experience for 
ten thousand years. 

Dr. Priestley, toiling in his laboratory, 
failed to find that for which he was searching. 
But by his failure he discovered oxygen and 
became the founder of the new science of 
chemistry. 

Columbus set sail for the Indies. He, too, 
utterly failed, but out of his failure there rose 
the limitless shores of the western continent 
and the far-away prospects of a great civiliza- 
tion. Look back, you who have memories and 
have received the "bludgeonings of chance" 
fair in the face. Have you not approached 
the desired door and had it shut with an 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 



211 



emphasis and a sound that was the sound of 
finality? Can you not recall experiences that 
seemed at the time like the crack of doom, 
and as you fell, you thought you saw the 
world smile — that peculiar smile — as if to say, 
''Another one has found his finish." But you 
are smiling now — that peculiar smile — as if 
to say: "My finish! I thought so then, but 
now I see it was not a finish, but the beginning 
of a better day." It is very wonderful, what 
discoveries we make in trying to find something 
else! 

Every blessing has its spur of disappoint- 
ment, that drives the life onward; and every 
disaster leaves its hot coal behind to kindle 
anew the fires of the soul. 

What does it mean — this unceasing move- 
ment, from pain to joy and from joy to pain — 
this steady march past victories, past defeats 
toward new victories and new defeats? It 
means something unspeakably grand, inspiring, 
tremendous! It means that we are launched 
on an infinite career! 

Eternity is ours, and the endless road fades 
away in the awful distance. We are not on a 
journey, for that implies a destination. It is 



212 



MAGIC WELLS 



not toward heaven or toward hell, for that 
implies a stop. We are simply going on, trying 
to find the unfindable and to accomplish the 
impossible — and heaven and hell are like roses 
and nettles growing beside the way. 

We are always arriving and always depart- 
ing, — some wilful and slow, some obedient and 
eager, — all happy and unhappy, all laughing 
and weeping, — but no music of laughter, no 
falling tear ever lost or wasted, but caught up 
and translated into that something we call 
experience and which is the bread and the wine 
of character. 

Everything counts, — pain, joy, victory, de- 
feat, — they are all needed to make a desirable 
day in any world. And the end? There is no 
end — only beautiful difficulties and superb 
battles and lifting horizons and vistas of unac- 
complished things — as far as the eye of the 
spirit can see. 

That is life now and evermore — and that 
is the zest, the inspiration, the splendor of it 
all 

The open doors and the shut doors — they 
all are in the Father's house; and wherever we 
stand and whatever happens to us, if we crave 



OPEN AND SHUT DOORS 213 



the same hopeful life, 
Stevenson see in them 
scheme of things and 
veiled God." 



we shall again with 
"the kindness of the 
the goodness of our 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH ; 



"And Jesus said, No man having put his hand 
to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the 
kingdom of God." — Luke ix. 62. 

IT is a figure of speech colored with local 
experience. Plowing in Palestine is not 
plowing on a Dakota prairie. In that Western 
soil, one rides on a cushioned seat and reads 
his morning paper, while the plowshare guides 
itself as it turns off its ribbons of mellow, lus- 
trous earth. 

But in the baked and stony fields of Pales- 
tine, the plow needs a master — one who neither 
looks behind nor yields to diversions, but keeps 
his eye forward, his mind alert, and his heart 
bent on the task. The furrows will not open 
of their own accord, neither will the plowshare 
take care of itself. The man has engaged to 
plow the field. Then let him plow it with 
attention, straightness, and efficiency! Other- 
wise he is unworthy of being a plowman, and 
spoils the field of its proper harvest. 

A hundred years ago, Unit aria nism went 
out to plow the hard and stubborn fields of 

217 



218 



MAGIC WELLS 



New England Calvinism. It was no easy task. 
It required enthusiasm, enduring loyalty, 
spiritual audacity, and social hazard. The 
Calvinistic system of theology had gripped the 
Protestant mind ever since the Genevan doctor 
kindled the fires of martyrdom for Servetus, 
the religious free-thinker. 

Our Puritan Fathers loaded their ships with 
it and distributed it throughout the colonized 
valleys of New England. It seemed to fit the 
heartless climate and the stingy soil. It pros- 
pered; but while prospering, it was slowly 
blighting the spiritual freedom and the human 
sympathies of the natural man. It is true, 
sturdy character walked those old-time village 
streets, but it was character, not of genial, 
blooming virtues, but of glittering, crystallized 
virtues — virtues made hard, austere, unbeauti- 
ful, by the pressure of a religion that deified 
tyranny, emptied heaven of justice and love, 
and coffined daily life in a rigid framework of 
imaginary terrors. 

But the Puritan soul was getting tired of 
Calvinism. It had endured drought, cold, 
bleakness — mental landscape of blue ice — for 
three centuries. 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 219 

Three hundred years of spiritual winter! 
And the new generations were wondering if the 
springtime would ever come. It was coming, 
and here and there the theological climate 
softened somewhat, and the old grim fields 
began to beckon for the sower and the seed. 
Then Channing went forth to plow and prepare 
for the planting-time. Just a hundred years 
ago to-morrow, he thrust the plowshare of that 
great sermon into the surprised acres of ortho- 
dox dogma. The earth groaned, and the theo- 
logical sky turned black and bellowed with 
thunder. Then came the great days — days, 
it is to be confessed, when factional bitterness 
precipitated hailstones of cutting words, but 
great days because convictions came out 
dressed, not in lambs' wool, but lion-skins; 
great days because men thought — thought with 
fierce sincerity and solemn courage; great days 
because the laity, who had been wont to revere 
the leadership of the clergy, thrust aside many 
a timid minister, and seizing the plow for them- 
selves, drove forward with zeal and effective 
power. 

Channing never dreamed that that sermon 
would produce such an uproar and such immedi- 



220 



MAGIC WELLS 



ate cleavage in religious ranks. The incarna- 
tion of gentleness and spiritual beauty, void 
of all sectarian temper, shrinking from the 
strife of tongues, he yet poured forth his soul 
that day as if he had been commissioned from 
on high to mobilize the lovers of the truth. 

Everything he said in that epoch-making 
discourse is a commonplace of Unitarianism 
to-day, and is, moreover, the working capital 
of hundreds of so-called orthodox communities 
of the present time. But then, it was like 
rending the veil of the Holy of Holies; and the 
watchmen of the Calvinistic temple rushed to 
its defense, as if Antichrist had come. The 
temple was in danger, but it was not Antichrist 
— it was the friend of truth and the angel of 
the Apocalypse. The temple was undermined 
that hour, and it is a picturesque and savage 
ruin in our sight to-day. 

What terrible things did Channing say? 
He declared the supremacy of the human 
reason. He put Holy Scripture under the 
searchlight of rational interpretation. He 
defended the character of God from the old 
imputations of cruelty, injustice, and the wrath 
of an irresponsible despot. He broke up the 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 221 



mystery of the Trinity, and behold, the Father- 
hood of one supreme oversoul, the pleading 
personality of Jesus as our human brother and 
prophet, and the Holy Spirit as the diffusive 
power of divine goodness and love. Then 
followed what he called "the one sublime 
idea," — the inherent dignity of human nature 
and the saving power of personal character, 
irrespective of any artificial mediation of a 
universal atonement. 

That is all! How mild and familiar it 
sounds this morning! How the sweet reason- 
ableness of those affirmations condemn the 
character of the theology that denounced them 
as the charter of hell. 

But in other ears they rang like silver bells 
of a new evangel — ears that had patiently 
waited to hear the music of their proclamation. 
From hilltops to hilltops their echoes flew — 
until in brief time, one hundred and twenty- 
five of Calvin's brazen bells thrilled to the 
new note and one hundred and twenty-five 
orthodox steeples rocked with their joyous 
clamor of acceptance and approval. New 
England was aflame. Unitarianism was born 
in the western world — born, not to easy con- 



222 



MAGIC WELLS 



quest, not even to toleration from rival faiths, 
but to persecution, to misunderstanding, to 
social ostracism, to full payment for disturb- 
ing the sobriety of petrified conservatism. 
That was the price your forefathers had to 
exchange — for whatf For intellectual liberty, 
for breaking the bonds of burdensome tradi- 
tion, for spiritual serenity in the presence of 
every new truth, for daily visions of fresh 
horizons opening out into a morally sound 
and beneficent universe. 

It cost something to be a Unitarian in those 
days. But the thinking farmer of the New 
Hampshire hills, and the substantial business 
man of Boston, and the professor of Harvard 
University, were all glad to make the sacrifice, 
that they might think in the open and five in a 
larger world. 

Thus the first fifty years of our free churches 
was a period of adjustment to unfavorable 
conditions, of fighting venomous opposition, 
of breaking down a popular prejudice that 
ignorantly charged us with atheism and ex- 
cluded us from Christian fellowship. Criticism 
forced us to use the weapons of negation, and 
our immediate duties of self-defense gave us no 
time for propagating our faith. 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 223 

We were a very interesting little group of 
churches, mentally choice — too choice perhaps; 
socially select — too select; perfectly self-satis- 
fied — too much so; contented in our green 
oases of isolation, and not anxious for immi- 
grants. And there we remained for two genera- 
tions, numerically unchanged, proudly culti- 
vating our private acres, and rather enjoying 
the hostility that shut us in and enlivened the 
seclusion of our position. 

In the last fifty years we have seen a sig- 
nificant change. We have seen ourselves dis- 
carding the old weapons of warfare and replac- 
ing them with the more positive tools of affir- 
mation and service. We have seen our boasted 
monopoly of culture invaded and distributed 
broadcast. We have seen our fount of liber- 
alism, once flowing for our special use, leaking 
through its Unitarian walls, and liberalizing 
our neighbors. But when it is used by them, 
the label is removed. We have seen the secta- 
rian prejudice greatly softened and in some 
communities practically extinct. We have 
seen our numbers multiply fourfold. We 
have seen ourselves installed in our rightful 
position and recognized as a small but a sig- 



224 



MAGIC WELLS 



nificant factor in the commonwealth of 
religions. 

We have seen one other thing — are seeing 
it now. It is a revival among ourselves. It is 
the awakened sense of responsibility to the 
faith we profess. It is the disappearance of 
our former complacency, our cozy isolation, 
our let-alone policy. Growing in their place 
is the strong desire to make our churches, not 
merely bomb-proof resorts of safety for Uni- 
tarian saints, but live centers of action, with 
risks and hazards and challenges of danger 
and sacrifice, — centers where strong, earnest 
men love to serve, because it is a man's job, — 
centers whence definite, aggressive, effective 
influences shall go over the top, to plant the 
standards of liberal religion and to do clean-cut, 
businesslike work in behalf of moral ideals. 

That is what we are witnessing in our de- 
nominational body at the present time, — not 
a new faith, but a new loyalty, — not the build- 
ing of a new foundation, but the building of a 
superstructure fit to face the main street of the 
new world, — not the search for a new field or 
a new plow, but for men to hold the plow and 
who will not look back. 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 225 



Now I am ready to ask a serious question. 
How does it happen that you men and women 
are here this morning? How does it happen 
that this church stands as a symbol of free, 
undogmatic religion? How does it happen that 
this pulpit reverently welcomes every new truth 
from life, and is expected to welcome it and to 
preach it without fear? Is it because Chan- 
ning delivered a certain sermon one hundred 
years ago? Is it because, thirty years later, 
Theodore Parker thundered on the platform 
of Music Hall? 

No! Channing and Parker were helpless 
without disciples and co-workers. Their gospel 
would have died as scraps of paper, if ten thou- 
sand sturdy laymen had not given it hands and 
feet and going, creative power. And we do 
not happen to be here this morning and this 
church does not happen to be Unitarian, but 
people and church are the logical outcome of 
that yeoman service performed by men who 
caught the airy ideals of their leaders and set 
them to work in forms of human flesh and blood. 

Read the short history of this church. It 
was not in existence when Calvin's bells changed 
their tune. Go back only to 1848 and see that 



226 



MAGIC WELLS 



little band of high-minded, determined people 
gathered in the bleak hall across the way. 
They were starting your church, my friends. 
See how they worked and sacrificed. See how 
they were scorned and obstructed. See how 
they were called godless infidels and pagan out- 
casts. But their hands were to the plow and 
they did not falter nor look back. 

The results of their endeavor and brave, 
joyous self-denials are your inheritance!! What 
will you do with the legacy transmitted to your 
keeping? What will you Unitarian laymen 
throughout the land do with the stewardship 
which the valiant dead have bequeathed to 
you? That is the pertinent question, asked 
not merely by your ministers, but more solemnly 
and appealingly by your times. There is a 
voice crying, not specifically from the pulpit, 
but from this godless, immoral wildness of 
social lawlessness and unrest. It is the voice 
of decency, of order, of social obligation, of 
religion, calling, out of the blackness and con- 
fusion, to the churches to wake to their respon- 
sibility and to mobilize enthusiasm and char- 
acter and common sense and Christian power 
against this incarnate evil of our days. 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 227 

What will you do? You will mobilize. 
You will begin in your own church. You will 
stop the leaks there, by which your influence 
trickles away and disappears. You will throw 
in your strength with the strength of others, 
until there is something forceful and mascu- 
line about the impact of your church upon the 
community life. You will give a new thought 
to the measureless value of the ideals for which 
your church stands — what they mean or ought 
to mean to you — what they might mean to 
others — what they might mean as the steady- 
ing power to the irregular heart of a democracy 
like ours. You will give to your faith that new 
thought, that new consideration, and you will 
rise from your thinking, impressed by its po- 
tential service to mankind, and with renewed 
zeal and devotion to the promotion and sup- 
port of its cause. 

You will focus your interest on your church 
and beware of that prodigality that scatters so 
widely that it loses its telling power. No man 
builds a water-mill beside a flat and shallow 
stream. He wants force and elemental push; 
he chooses a place where he can obtain them. 
He concentrates that power on the buckets of 



228 



MAGIC WELLS 



the wheel — his wheel, and the mill answers the 
impulse and hums from loft to foundation. 
That is the way to make mills go; that is the 
way to make churches go. 

One of the weaknesses of Unitarianism is 
that excessive liberality that ripens and rots 
into a disintegrated loyalty. The easy-going 
liberal says one church is as good as another, 
and so he has so many churches, he doesn't 
know what to do. And not knowing what to 
do, he does anything and everything, and in 
doing that, does nothing effectively. 

If I read history aright, I discover that every 
movement that ever went straight to the mark, 
was driven there by single, intense, undivided 
loyalty. Selfish, narrow, sectarian, bigoted? 
No! but the higher motive, — getting a good 
thing done thoroughly and promptly as pos- 
sible. You cannot plow, with teams radiating 
to the four points of the compass. Hitch your 
team to the single, straightaway beam and 
begin the day's work. 

Neither will you be drugged by the subtle 
sophistry that the church is chiefly for women 
and children. No one knows where that wily 
self-deception originated. Perhaps it came 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 229 



from that capacious limbo where emergency 
excuses and ready-made apologies are pre- 
pared for guilty consciences. But whatever 
its origin, it prevails to a serious extent in the 
subconscious layers of the masculine mind. 

The church is for women and children, and 
many a church bears witness, with its very 
life, to their fidelity and consecration. But the 
church is even more pointedly for you men. 
I dare tell you that you are the needy class. If 
the church needs you, as God knows it does, — 
needs your wisdom and guidance and sincere 
allegiance, — on the other hand you need the 
church, — need it more than your wives and 
children do. You come up every day out of 
the cares and distractions and temptations of 
a busy world; you need the religious vision and 
the spiritual outlook, — need it as just plain, 
hard-headed business men endowed with 
directive emotions and aspirations, as well as 
with directive brains. You come up out of 
regions where you see the fruits of low ideals 
and hear the discords of predatory passions, 
and you wonder what can be done and how you 
can serve; then you need the church as a con- 
structive tool to help you abate the wrongs of 
life and diminish the strife and confusion. 



230 



MAGIC WELLS 



Why, then, be beguiled by the fiction that 
if a church have a minister and an adequate 
income, it is a church? It is not a church. It 
is a public parasite. The church is not a charter 
of incorporation; it is not a building with 
memorial glass and religious symbols; it is not 
a book to be signed; it is not a minister and a 
sexton. The church is you — you with your 
interest and experience and manful power and 
nerve to stand by. The church lives because 
you are living members. The church serves 
because you are serving members. The church 
dies because you are dead members. 

It is said that Unitarian laymen are con- 
stitutionally indifferent, cold, not deeply stirred 
by emotion or hot loyalty. Believe nothing of 
the kind. Never think so meanly of yourselves. 
You belong to the human family. Your physi- 
cal anatomy is like other men's. Your psycho- 
logical structure is the same. You are not 
unique. If you do not feel as spontaneously as 
others do, it is because the flood-gates have 
jammed, not because the reservoir is dry. 

We are inspecting the flood-gates. Every 
one that is out of repair, we are going to put 
in order, so that it will work smoothly. Then 



THE LAYMAN AND HIS CHURCH 231 

we are going to open them all and flood the 
churches — yes, baptize them with an immersion 
of enthusiasm and devotion that will reconse- 
crate them to the service of God and man. 

And you men — every one of you — will be 
caught in that flood, and you will come up out 
of it better Unitarians and better churchmen 
than you ever were before. 

Two weeks ago, four hundred and fifty 
Unitarian laymen from all parts of the country 
met in Springfield and trembled with excite- 
ment. Think of it, — trembled with excite- 
ment. Excited about what? About their own 
religious faith, its value, its opportunity, its 
reconstructive power in these pitifully appeal- 
ing days. They trembled, and then they did 
something. 

They straightway formed a nation-wide 
Layman's League, which shall do for the man- 
side of the church what the Women's Alliance 
has so successfully done for the woman-side. 
Now we have the two teams working side by 
side and in the same direction. 

Moreover, as that Alliance has a distin- 
guished branch in this church, so the League 
will have a chapter here and a distinguished 



232 



MAGIC WELLS 



one; and you men, you rebaptized and recon- 
structed Unitarians, will excitedly join it and 
float it into power and service, on the tide of 
the aroused interest of your minds and the 
awakened fealties of your hearts. 

May that tide have no ebb! He is a poor 
prophet, who cannot discern the signs of the 
time and see the coming of wider horizons and 
more fruitful fields. 

"No man, having put his hand to the plow, 
and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of 
God." 

Our Heavenly Father, deepen within 
us our consecration to the work Thy 
kingdom calls us to do, until the dignity 
and need of it possess our wills and 
enlist our service; and the service shall 
remove our effort and make even sacri- 
fice a joy. Amen. 



OPPORTUNITY 



OPPORTUNITY 



"Go thy way for this time; when I have a 
convenient season, I will call for thee." — Acts 
xxiv. 25. 

FELIX thus missed the greatest opportunity 
of his life — the opportunity of hearing 
Paul speak upon Christianity. 

Felix was Roman governor and Paul was 
his prisoner. The two men were face to face 
for the first time in the council chamber, and 
Paul was about to begin his address, when 
the whimsical Felix changed his mind and con- 
cluded he would not hear the great apostle 
that day. And so he sent him back to prison 
with the words: 'Til listen to you some other 
time. I don't feel like it now." 

That "some other time" never came. Be- 
fore Felix "felt like" hearing Paul, the Roman 
Emperor had changed his mind about the 
qualifications of his governor at Csesarea, and 
Felix found himself, like many an office-holder 
of modern times, suddenly reduced to the ranks 
of civil life. 

235 



236 



MAGIC WELLS 



He had that one chance of holding a pri- 
vate audience with the great Christian Mis- 
sionary, but he put it aside for some trifle of 
the hour, believing that he could summon 
Paul whenever he wanted him. The next 
thing he knew, he was out of office and Paul 
was on his way to Rome to be tried before 
Caesar. 

The opportunity came, was permitted to 
pass by, and when once gone, was gone forever. 

There is a practical lesson for us in this 
New Testament story. It is a lesson on the 
meaning of opportunities in our daily life. 

We often say that men miss their oppor- 
tunities and lose, or they improve their oppor- 
tunities and win. 

What do we mean? Is there some magic 
formula for getting on in the world, which 
men discover by accident? Is there some God 
of luck presiding over life and throwing talis- 
mans and sesame seed to his favorites? Some 
people think so. They suppose that an oppor- 
tunity is a full-blown glory cast at a man's 
feet. They imagine that it is something which 
a man finds like a purse in the road, or that 
it is something like an invisible door, which 



OPPORTUNITY 



237 



opens as he unconsciously leans against it and 
lets him fall into some unsuspected apartment 
of wealth or greatness. 

Now opportunity may have in it the ele- 
ment of chance, but it is a great deal more than 
chance, a great deal more than the mere con- 
junction of happy circumstance. It implies a 
human will with power to act. It implies fit- 
ness of time. It implies the seasonable hour. 

An opportunity is simply this: the priv- 
ilege of doing the right thing at the right time. 
It is the freedom which every man has, of 
speaking and acting wisely just at the fitting 
moment. 

If I wish to board a train, I must go where 
it stops and be there when it stops. I can't 
do it between stations. I must co-operate 
with the railway company to make the op- 
portunity. 

One day, on the shores of Lake Superior, 
I watched my Indian guides land in their canoe 
during a gale of wind. The blue of the distant 
water was whipped into whiteness, and the 
surf pounded the beach with relentless fury. 
On they came, their frail bark rising and fall- 
ing on the tossing waves. A hundred yards 



238 



MAGIC WELLS 



from shore they paused. To corne on then 
would be destruction swift and sure. There 
they waited in the flying spray, then- faces 
turned seaward with expectant gaze. Sud- 
denly one cried, "It comes, it comes!" What 
comes? The one great wave they were wait- 
ing for. Far out, I could see it rushing land- 
ward, its head high above its fellows. Nearer 
and nearer it came, and when at last it swelled 
beneath the canoe and lifted it high in the 
air — quick as a flash the waiting paddles smote 
deep the water — stroke after stroke with skillful 
power that always kept the great wave di- 
rectly underneath; and on its crested front 
the canoe shot forward and was set gently 
as a feather, far up on the sandy beach. 

The great wave was an occasion, but it 
did not become an opportunity until it was 
boiling beneath the canoe and the right mo- 
ment had arrived to strike the paddles into 
its bosom. 

An opportunity, then, is the conjunction 
of time and circumstance — the liberty, put 
before you and me, of doing the appointed 
thing at the appointed hour. 

There are two kinds of opportunity. There 



OPPORTUNITY 



239 



are silent, invisible opportunities. They go 
by like unseen spirits. They make no noise; 
they never cry out and command us. In 
fact, we never know that they have been 
with us until some later revelation tells us 
how near we have been to some great thing. 

Hawthorne, in one of his stories, pictured 
a boyish pilgrim fast asleep beside the road. 
A rich man drives by, pauses, looks upon his 
face, and is moved to adopt him as his own 
son, and then some incident occurs to change 
his mind and he passes on. Then follows 
a band of robbers who would kill him for 
the few pence he may possess, but they are 
frightened away by some one else, who lingers 
for a moment beside the child with some other 
plan in view. And so this procession of un- 
seen possibilities goes on, until at last the boy 
awakes, unconscious of what has happened 
while he slept, shoulders his little bundle, 
and trudges on his way. 

Thus opportunities hover over us while 
we sleep; they brush by us while we work 
and are absorbed in life's affairs. We know 
nothing about them. 

There are J possible inventions and dis- 



240 



MAGIC WELLS 



coveries right under our eyes to-day, which, 
if we could but see, would make the world 
ring with applause of us. Lurking at our 
elbows and dancing before our faces are pos- 
sibilities which, could we understand and 
realize, would daze us with joy and satis- 
faction. 

Scarcely one of us can look back over life 
without seeing points where we could have 
become millionaires, where we could have be- 
come famous, where we could have saved a 
character or won a noble cause or transformed 
our own lives, if we had only known. 

But the opportunity didn't wake us and 
declare itself; and when our eyes did open, 
it was too late. 

There is something unspeakably sad about 
all this, but there is one star of hope that 
promises great things. The wiser we grow, 
the higher we climb, the more visible these 
unseen opportunities become. With the 
naked eye you can see only three thousand 
stars; with an opera glass, a few thousand 
more; with the last telescope, fifty thousand. 
That is what eternal life means — the growth 
from a vision of three thousand opportunities 
to the vision of fifty thousand. 



OPPORTUNITY 



241 



But with the opportunities we cannot see 
we have little to do — they need not trouble 
us now. There are enough visible opportuni- 
ties to keep every man busy fifteen hours a 
day for just as many years as God will let 
him live. 

These belong to the second class. They 
are the opportunities that speak, that make 
themselves known, that come rushing into a 
man's life every day, knocking at his door, 
beating at his windows, begging, entreating, 
commanding him to take them, use them, and 
make them his own. Life is crammed full 
with these possibilities that lead out into 
power and goodness and help. 

Indeed, that is what life is, — just a series of 
privileges to act and to be, just an arrange- 
ment of opportunities fringing the pathway of 
human feet; and life goes up or down, men 
wither or grow, die or live, according as they 
accept those opportunities or reject them. 

Take any day of your life and see if it is 
not made up from beginning to end of these 
various chances great and small — these chances 
to grow in mind and soul. 

When you get up in the morning and go 



242 



MAGIC WELLS 



down to breakfast, there is always an oppor- 
tunity to be kind and magnanimous. Every- 
body knows that. When you go to your house- 
hold duties, or to your business, or into the so- 
cial circle, opportunities spring up on every 
hand — opportunities to be faithful, to be honest, 
to be heroic — opportunities to say the helpful 
word or to do the charitable and generous deed 
— opportunities to be moral, to be religious, 
to be great in manly and womanly ways. And 
when you come home at night and sit down 
by the fireside, if you cannot see opportunities 
there to be hero, martyr, thinker, prophet, 
helper, all in one, then you are blind indeed, 
and need, more than anything else, something 
to open your eyes. 

I am talking less about these big oppor- 
tunities that men get excited over, and am 
putting the special emphasis on those smaller 
possibilities that throng your common every- 
day life. These little doors we are too apt 
to think are not worth opening, yet it is just 
these that make up life, just these that give 
entrance into success and genuine greatness. 

The wide, splendid opportunities are rare, 
but the little ones come in showers. 



OPPORTUNITY 



243 



The great business man is he who watches 
details. The great poet is he who sings the 
common experiences of the soul. The great 
Christ of any household, or country, or age, is 
he who counts the common needs of men his 
mission and the giving of a cup of cold water a 
ministry divine. 

There is an old legend of an artist who would 
carve an image of the Madonna as he dreamed 
of her in his heart. For years he sought in 
vain for the right piece of sandalwood where- 
with to embody his dream. At last, one night 
as he sat by his fire, an angel appeared unto 
him and commanded him to seize the oaken log 
burning upon the hearth and out of that to 
chisel the Virgin's face. He obeyed the heav- 
enly vision, and men in after years gazed upon 
his work and called it the noblest creation of 
his hand. 

So many a life has been vaporized into 
nothing, many a man has wasted his best 
years, seeking, droning, waiting for the great 
opportunity, when right at hand, lying all 
around him while he dreamed, were innumer- 
able commonplace opportunities which he dis- 
dained because of their humbleness, and yet 



244 



MAGIC WELLS 



which would have led straight to the throne 
of his grandest power. 

It is a very common belief, that some men 
are robbed of their rights in this world by being 
deprived of their opportunities. You hear men 
complaining that they have had no chance; 
that they are poor or ignorant or morally per- 
verse because the conditions of life have pinched 
and dwarfed them. They say, if they had had 
this man's privileges or that man's privileges, 
they would have risen to what he is. 

There is some truth in this belief, just 
enough to make it extremely dangerous. I 
believe that some men are robbed of their 
opportunities from their birth. I believe that 
in the present conditions of society many people 
do not have a fair chance, — they are handi- 
capped by circumstances which they did not 
create; they are tangled in a web of adverse 
conditions which was woven for them before 
they were born. Some rare souls make these 
very conditions their opportunity for a grand 
fight for freedom and greatness, but most 
people thus weighted down stay where they 
are. And I believe that this unfairness in the 
lot of some men, this unequal adjustment of 



OPPORTUNITY 



245 



natural privileges, will one day be understood 
by enlightened men and women as their oppor- 
tunity to show mercy and to work justice in 
behalf of their fellow-men. 

I grant, then, that some classes do not have 
a fair chance in the world; but see how falsely 
and viciously that fact is used as an excuse by 
men who have no right to use it. 

You will see men, whose lives have been 
wretched failures in the midst of boundless 
advantages, taking excuses upon their lips that 
a Hottentot ought to be ashamed of. They 
say that the world has gone against them; 
that the door of opportunity was shut; that 
they could have stood where their old com- 
panions now stand if they had had the same 
privileges and the same chances. 

Look into a case like that and nine times 
out of ten you will find that those who failed 
and those who succeeded had equal oppor- 
tunities, only the one let them pass by and the 
other seized and improved them. 

Within certain limitations, the chief differ- 
ence between men is not a difference of oppor- 
tunities, but a difference in the use of those 
opportunities, — a difference in courage to em- 



246 



MAGIC WELLS 



ploy them, — a difference in grit and persistence 
to hold on until every atom of power has been 
extracted from them. 

Edward Rowland Sill, in one of his poems, 
pictures a battlefield where a prince is seen 
struggling against tremendous odds. On the 
outskirts of the battle stands a coward bewail- 
ing his lot. "Ah," he says to himself, "if I 
only had a sharp keen blade like that of yonder 
prince! But what can I do with this dull and 
clumsy tool?" And so he breaks the despised 
sword across his knees, flings it down and 
deserts the field. And now there rushed by 
the prince, wounded, his weapons gone — the 
enemy close at his heels. He sees the broken 
sword lying in the sand. He grasps it by the 
hilt — wheels about, and with splendid courage 
beats back the enemy and wins at last the vic- 
tory for a noble cause. 

That is history — history written in the her- 
oism of thousands of lives — a history which 
is being confirmed by men everywhere to-day, 
who are taking the very opportunities that 
others fling away, and by them are winning 
victories and making themselves and the world 
better and nobler. 



OPPORTUNITY 



247 



This may be a hard doctrine. It may be 
hard to call a man who has failed, a craven 
and a coward. But it is meant to be hard 
only for those who are cowards — only for those 
who sit down in the midst of the ripened wheat 
and starve to death because every stalk doesn't 
bear a nicely browned baker's loaf. It is 
meant only for those who on the grounds of 
a lack of opportunity excuse their ignorance, 
or their selfishness, or their indolence, when 
all the while knowledge is beating at their 
doors, the call for generosity is sounding in 
their ears, and the world's work is faltering 
because the laborers are few. 

It may seem very hard to those who think 
they have a grievance against the world, who 
complain (and justify themselves in complain- 
ing) that whatever they have touched has 
turned into the ashes of failure. 

There are people who are moaning because 
their chances have been few, because their 
opportunities have been, after all, only trap- 
doors that dropped them into trouble. What 
kind of opportunities are they thinking about? 
Do they not mean opportunities of wealth, of 
position, of selfish gratification? Well, that is 
not so bad after all. 



248 



MAGIC WELLS 



Stop mourning about such trifles. Is it not 
about time in this year of grace, after the 
world has been struggling thousands of years 
to learn what the real things of life are, — is it 
not about time for us to understand that the 
things that perish, the things external, are but 
as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal in 
comparison with value of character and the 
culture of the soul? 

Suppose opportunities for wealth and posi- 
tion have never been yours ! What of it? Hav- 
ing nothing, you yet have all. You have never 
been so poor, never been so hemmed in by a 
cruel fate, that you have not had ample oppor- 
tunity to enlarge your own soul, freedom to 
sit every day on the great throne of character — 
chances without number to be true to your 
own consciences and helpful to your fellow- 
men. These, after all, are the simplest and the 
greatest opportunities that any life can have: 
the simplest because they are everywhere and 
belong to all men, no matter how humble and 
unknown they may be; the greatest because 
they open into eternity and lead up to the 
greatest results which the human mind can 
conceive. 



OPPORTUNITY 



249 



Here, then, is a great responsibility, — the 
responsibility of taking hold of life's ordinary 
opportunities and making the most of them. 
There is no greater charge placed upon any 
man's shoulders than just this duty of making 
the hour serve his soul. 

When a man consciously neglects the oppor- 
tunity which his conscience bids him take, he 
is recreant to his duty; he sins against the law 
of his own life. Some of the worst sins of 
which we are guilty are not those we willfully 
commit, but the sins of omission, — the sins of 
duties neglected, of words unspoken, of oppor- 
tunities ignored, of possibilities we saw and did 
not try to fulfill. 

In the college yard of All Souls at Oxford 
stands a great sundial built two hundred years 
ago. Across its cracked weather-beaten face 
you can still read the inscription, "The hours 
perish, but they are charged up to your ac- 
count." 

So, too, the opportunities pass by, but they 
are charged up to your account. The books 
where those accounts are kept, are the record 
of your own life. You can look back and see 
what opportunities you missed — see how your 



250 



MAGIC WELLS 



own folly, or perversity, or thoughtlessness, 
robbed you of some of the noblest privileges 
of the day, dulled your ears to divine mes- 
sages, palsied lip and hand for saying the true 
word or doing the right thing. They are charged 
up to your account, — charged in the loss that 
your own life has suffered and must suffer 
because you let them pass by never to return. 
The past cannot be called back, but to-day is 
here, to-morrow will come. 

The problem you have to solve is the prob- 
lem of life. The problem of life is how to use 
opportunities. You may study life in all its 
heights and depths, and everywhere it is always 
just this — the use of opportunities. 

I know no other way to solve this problem, 
no other way to get out of life its greatest pos- 
sibilities, than to serve the present hour, — to 
take hold of the nearest duty and do it, — to 
seize the first opportunity that would pass by 
(no matter how small it may be) and not let 
it go until its blessing is yours. 

Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee 
for our gifts of mind and heart. Lead 
us in the way of using and enriching 



OPPORTUNITY 



them by wisely choosing the common 
privileges of our fellowship and the 
common opportunities of human service. 
Amen. 



ALONE 



ALONE 



"I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy 
commandments from me." — Ps. cxix. 19. 

IT is not the voice of a hermit, brooding in 
his cave on the edge of the desert. It is 
not the cry of a man in a strange land, sur- 
rounded by unfamiliar scenes and faces. It is 
rather the word of one who in the crowded 
streets of Jerusalem, in constant touch with 
friends and neighbors, realizes the detachment 
of his soul from the things around him and 
prays for the companionship of spiritual ideals. 

It seems at first a unique and unnatural 
note. For we say, the obvious fact of the 
individual life is not its isolation, but its union 
with all other lives. It is perfectly apparent, 
we declare, that no one is or can be independent 
of his fellow-men or of the influences that 
radiate from the world. 

How can a man be a stranger in the earth? 
All the evidence seems to be on the other 
side. For we all are conspicuously the prod- 
ucts of our inheritances and our environment! 

255 



256 



MAGIC WELLS 



We come into the world stamped all over 
with the hall-marks of the past. Thousands of 
ancestors, whose names we never heard, whose 
life story the world has forgotten, have made 
their contributions to the personalities by 
which you and I are known to-day. Our 
brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, 
form a countless host, whose shadowy images 
we see reflected in ourselves. 

Moreover, our lives are all interwoven with 
the great throbbing common life around us. 

The world is our neighborhood. The 
masses are attached to us by a thousand subtle 
ties. We are caught in the crowd by customs 
and laws and habits and obligations, and even 
if we wish to be alone, the multitude knock at 
our bolted doors and shout " good-morning" 
beneath our curtained windows. Most of us 
are what we are because of the great company 
in which we think and live. It is the conta- 
gion of association. Much of our religion is a 
tribal epidemic, so that we are Buddhists or 
Mohammedans or Christians, because we were 
born in a certain locality and under the shadow 
of certain institutions. In politics, in methods 
of action and speech, in our esthetic tastes and 



ALONE 



257 



enthusiasm, we are to a large degree infected 
by the ideals and standards and fashions of the 
hour. And so wherever we are, at work or at 
play, at home or abroad, we are all interlocked 
with our fellow-men, and seemingly there is no 
place for that isolation and loneliness of which 
the Psalmist speaks. 

And yet the Psalmist is right. We are 
alone. We are alone as a race. The human 
family (in a certain sense) is detached from the 
Universe. We are like a group of sailors drift- 
ing in their open boat beneath the fogs of a 
pathless sea. 

We are separated from the vast animal 
world beneath us by unbridged differences. 
We are separated from the infinite Universe 
above us by the awful distances of space. Here 
we are, eating and drinking, laughing and 
weeping, buying and selling, talking about our 
religion and politics, boasting of our freedom 
and the bigness of the world, as if we were the 
center of the cosmic order. And yet we are not 
free. We are prisoners on a little ball of earth, 
wheeling silently along its lonely orbit in the 
heavens — scarcely felt as an appreciable force 
in the mighty system. 



258 



MAGIC WELLS 



And all around us the voiceless heights and 
depths of space. We reach out our hands to 
the world above us and ask, "Who is there?' ' 
We build watch-towers and poise the lenses of 
vision, hoping to read some signal from out the 
awful mystery. We scan, with anxious eyes, 
the changing aspects of the planet Mars, and 
every hint of human life and thought in that 
strange world is hailed with joy and universal 
interest. And yet all is unknown. 

In spite of all our cries and eager search- 
ings, we have heard only the echoes of our own 
voices and the sounds of our own footsteps. 

We are still alone — a little world wander- 
ing in the silent wilderness of space. 

And we are alone not only as a race hid 
away in our corner of the Universe, but we are 
also alone as individuals. We are separated 
from our fellows by impassable gulfs. In de- 
fiance of social bonds, in spite of common 
customs and all our familiar means of com- 
munication, there are spaces between man and 
man that make us strangers to one another. 

Who has ever fathomed the hidden depths 
of his friend's life? Who has ever felt that 



ALONE 259 

he has been completely understood even by 
those nearest and dearest to him? There are 
thoughts that speech cannot hold. There are 
emotions that cannot be expressed. There 
are states of consciousness that evade the 
clumsy tongue, as the quality of love or holi- 
ness evades the painter's brush. 

We are ever refining our language, multiply- 
ing our words, creating delicate and flexible 
forms of expression, but somehow in like ratio 
the area of the inner life increases and new and 
subtler emotions rise to the surface of con- 
sciousness. And so we are no better off than 
we were before. We are still shut in and iso- 
lated from our fellow-beings by our own limita- 
tions. 

How often after we think we have said our 
best, we realize that the best and truest has 
sifted through the words and remains behind! 
How often after we have done our best, we 
find that we have utterly failed to visualize 
for the watching world our finest purpose and 
our truest desire. 

The poet sings, "We are spirits clad in 
veils." That is true to the experience of 
every one of us. Over the face of every human 



260 



MAGIC WELLS 



soul the veil is hung and cannot be lifted. We 
meet and smile and exchange ideas and think 
we understand each other, and we do in a 
superficial fashion, but the veil is there, con- 
cealing "the hidden man of the heart' ' — the 
fathomless mystery of a human soul. And so 
we live alone, although at the very heart and 
center of the busy, chattering throng. And 
so we die alone, although the sunset way is 
filled with white-faced pilgrims. 

Alone! It is one of the fundamental facts 
of life. What does it mean? What shall we 
do with it? 

Most of us know something of its cheer- 
less aspects. We have felt at times as if we 
stood in the pathless desert) surrounded by 
vast silences. We have looked into the deep 
chasms of separation with wonder and pain. 
We have experienced the despair of solitude, 
as we have tried to signal to other lives, — as 
in dreams at night, we have found ourselves 
strangely dumb. 

There have been times in the history of 
the world when this depression fell upon whole 
groups of men. They said: "There is noth- 



ALONE 



261 



ing. The soul is a fiction. The Universe is 
a huge mockery." And then was heard the 
wail of the pessimist and the cackling laughter 
of the cynic; and despondent prophets, turn- 
ing back from the edge of the voiceless depths, 
gathered handfuls of dust and mixing it with 
their own blood, fashioned idols of sense and 
pleasure. But such times are times of tem- 
porary fatigue. It is humanity at its points 
of occasional exhaustion. 

In our better hours, we repudiate the weak- 
nesses of our worst hours. 

We refuse to accept this tragic solution of 
the mystery. We say — what do we say? We 
say, in the first place, that this isolation of the 
human soul is the token of its infinite divine 
capacity. It is a perpetual prophecy of our 
unsuspected greatness, of the splendid pos- 
sibilities beneath the surface of our lives. When 
the soul of Helen Keller lay imprisoned behind 
the bars of her infirmities, what a solitude it 
must have been! And who ever suspected 
what was there concealed! But when the 
avenues of expression were opened at last, the 
world was astonished at the revelations that 
were made. 



262 



MAGIC WELLS 



Who knows what we shall be when the bar- 
riers that confine us are lifted away! Our 
consciousness that we are more than we can 
express, is profoundly significant. If we could 
wear our hearts on our sleeves, what shallow 
things we should be! If we could escape our 
personal loneliness, if we could utter our com- 
plete selves, if we could open our holy of holies 
to our best friend, it would argue — not a greater 
nature, but a smaller one. 

The solitudes of the soul do prophesy, and 
the unutterable yearnings and desires of the 
heart are intimations of the divine greatness 
of man. 

And then, we say, in the second place, that 
this spiritual loneliness furnishes a refreshing 
retreat for the human soul. In olden days 
the Roman church had its monasteries, where 
men could escape the roaring world, and within 
the stillness of cloistered gardens regain their 
spiritual poise. But the creative wisdom has 
done greater things for us all by granting every 
life a sacred privacy of its own. Our solitude 
is our refuge. Thither the world cannot follow 
us. We go in and shut the door. Outside 



ALONE 



263 



is the garrulous multitude, and its laughter 
and criticism, its flattery and praise, and our 
own failures and broken tools and foiled en- 
deavors. But the door is shut, and we are 
alone within the mysterious seclusion of our 
own being — alone with the promises and 
hopes and desires of our nobler selves. 

These are our re-creative hours — hours 
when new health, fresh strength, and heartier 
courage take possession of us, — and we open 
the door and pass out into the highway of 
strife and service. 

Who of us does not know of such experiences 
—times when to be shut in was a joyous free- 
dom, and spiritual loneliness was a welcome 
boon! And in these days of strenuous effort 
and insidious temptation we need such ex- 
periences more than ever before. In the temple 
of Apollo at Delphi was engraved the famous 
saying of the Seven Sages, "Know thyself." 
It has not lost its significance. We still need 
to know ourselves — need to be with ourselves — 
need the privacy, the solitude of our own souls. 
For after all, the sources of life lie back in the 
hidden springs of the nature. 

The brazen cannon of warship and fortress 



264 



MAGIC WELLS 



are forged amid the roar of white-hot furnaces 
and the shouts of grimy, sweating men. But 
the formula of their composition was worked 
out within the quiet seclusion of the chemist's 
cell. 

Character is set together amid the robust 
exactions of the world, but its creative idealism 
was born in the solitudes of the spirit. 

Then, again, this separation of the soul 
from the outer world betokens the nature of 
its intimacies, its associations, its companion- 
ships. A man's real social relationships are 
inside of him, and not outside. 

His actual society is spiritual, not visible 
and material. He moves in two worlds: one 
is the world of flesh and sense, the world of 
common observance and familiar alliances; the 
other is the inner world of his own individual 
privacy. As he passes from the outer world, 
he leaves behind its formal associations, and 
within the shut door of his personal life meets 
a new group of faces, encounters a new set of 
influences. These are his intimates. These 
are his actual friends or enemies. They go 
where he goes, they lie down at his side, they 



ALONE 



265 



sit at his table, they form his spiritual house- 
hold, in the midst of which he lives and moves 
and has his being. 

And so while we have been thinking all the 
time of man's loneliness we have been mis- 
taken. He is not alone. He lives at the 
heart of a densely populated world and 
between him and its companionship there is 
no barrier, no reserve, no intervals of space. 

How profoundly important it is, that these 
intimates should be of a noble order! 

A man can choose what they shall be. He 
can ask for the friendship of great 'principles 
and they shall gather about him and gird his 
soul like bands of steel. 

They are indeed impersonal. The principles 
of justice and honor and purity cannot speak 
or hear, and yet it is wonderful how the human 
spirit can lay hold of these abstract laws 
and breathe into them vitality and command- 
ing power. Every strong soul works the 
miracle. It is the old story of Pygmalion and 
Galatea. First the mind thinks them into 
form, then a desire wakes them into life, and 
then the heart pours out its loyalty and love. 

And when the miracle has been wrought 



266 



MAGIC WELLS 



and they become the warm, intimate realities 
of a man's inner life, what strength and up- 
holding service they supply! 

Leigh Hunt, speaking of Napoleon's last 
days, says, "No great principle stood by him." 
A man is indeed bereft when noble ideals have 
deserted him. He is like a mariner on the wide 
seas, with stars shut out and compass gone. 
His larger references have been taken away 
and there is no fixed standard to which he can 
adjust his life and behavior. He is at the mercy 
of every temptation — the easy victim of every 
event. But he who keeps the great ideals at 
his side and refers every question of the hour 
to their decision, is perfectly safe and enjoys 
a friendship of priceless value. 

But not only great principles. The soul 
is not always solving deep problems or asking 
decisions on different questions of right and 
wrong. It sometimes rests from these duties 
and summons the imagination to create visions 
and weave romantic fancies. And these phan- 
toms of the air, by repetition become at last 
substantial realities, and serve the soul in its 
leisure hours. 

We urge the influence of noble art in shap- 



ALOXE 



267 



ing the tastes and choices of the people. But 
there is a still more potent education that comes 
from the pictures and images which one habitu- 
ally sees on the walls of his inner life. The 
thought that casts its spell, the spiritual scenery 
that spreads before the eye, the ideas that play 
their parts on the private stage of the heart — 
all these are more vital, more powerful in de- 
termining the quality of life, than any out- 
ward environment could possibly be. Ruskin 
in one of his addresses to young women said, 
"Make for yourselves nests of beautiful 
thoughts. " It is the doctrine of spiritual 
environment. 

We may not choose where our bodies shall 
live, but we can choose what airs our souls 
shall breathe and what our spiritual frontage 
shall be. 

Fra Angelico painted the cold walls of his 
cell until they glowed with the crimson and 
gold of heavenly choirs. 

John Bunyan the tinker lay in Bedford jail, 
but John Bunyan the dreamer wandered among 
the Delectable Mountains and walked the 
streets of the Celestial City. We may be alone, 
but we have at command the magical services 



268 



MAGIC WELLS 



of imagination. We are to ask it to paint for 
us such splendid pictures, to hold up before 
us such noble images, to unfold before us such 
spiritual wealth of our own natures, that we 
shall dwell in friendship with the best things 
and the loftiest ideals. 

And now we think for a moment of one 
other companionship, kinder and deeper, more 
reassuring than all others. As one makes 
friends with his purest and holiest ideals, as 
he lives in close touch with the strength and 
health of great principles, he instinctively feels 
that behind them all is the large, inclusive 
friendliness of God. Filling all space, bind- 
ing vagrant worlds into one mighty order, 
drenching star and atom with His spirit, the 
Principle of all principles, the Beauty of all 
beautiful things, He floods every nook and 
cranny of the human soul with His loving 
presence. 

It is that splendid thought that has sus- 
tained human hearts through all ages, banished 
the terrors of solitude, and filled the silent 
voids with voices of encouragement and peace. 
"I am not alone," said Jesus to his disciples, 
"for the Father is with me." 



ALONE 269 

Through that transparent utterance we 
behold the secret of his courage, his abundant 
faith, his wonderful tranquillity of soul. The 
world might scoff, friends might fail, and the 
cross might fling its shadow across his path- 
way, but why should he falter, when his com- 
panion was the Eternal? 

The little child clasps his father's hand and 
passes through all the terrors and mysteries 
of the crowded city streets, fearless and un- 
troubled because wisdom and love are walking 
at his side. 

That is the parable for us to-day. There is 
no loneliness in the consciousness of God. 
There is no fear, if He is our friend. There 
is no mystery that cannot wait, if His wisdom 
conceals the secret. 

The companionship of beautiful visions, of 
great principles, of the guiding spirit of God! 
What a rich triad of friendships ! What a wide 
range of spiritual alliances! How abundantly 
the human soul has been remembered! And 
now how easy it is to go on and not be afraid 
of what men call solitude. For there we dis- 
cover those higher associations that give life 
its strongest supports and its noblest satisfac- 



270 



MAGIC WELLS 



tions. For after all, the truest test of character 
is not its power to meet the demands of the 
world, but its power to meet the demands of 
its own seclusion. 

The weak man is unable to endure his own 
company. The strong man is not afraid to 
be alone, for he is still in good society. 

One of the great arts of living is to know 
how to enjoy one's self, to be alone and yet 
have company, to be destitute and yet have 
the abundant resources of the spirit. And 
when we have learned that art, we have won 
independence of the threats or applause of the 
world, immunity to the hurts and ills of ad- 
versity, and have come to the secret source of 
life's happiness and entered into its richest 
and noblest friendships. 

Our Heavenly Father, we pray for 
the understanding heart, that we may 
see the glory and win the teaching of the 
things unseen, and realize the boundless 
friendship of Thy presence. Amen, 



A LITTLE CHILD 



A LITTLE CHILD 



IF you begin at any point in our modern 
Christian civilization and go backward, 
you will find yourself at last bending like the 
wondering shepherds over the manger-cradle 
of a little child. 

All the lines of our religious history, of our 
holiest associations, of our loveliest symbolism, 
converge and meet there. 

The star has been hanging over Bethlehem 
for two thousand years, and every divergent 
ray gleaming across the world leads poet and 
painter and thinker back to that little town in 
the hills, to kneel with the wise men beside the 
cradle of the infant Jesus. 

And so on the threshold of Christianity we 
meet a babe lying in a manger. That fact may 
or may not be significant. It is not significant 
if you approach Christianity as a system of 
philosophy, a body of religious doctrine, or as 
a code of ethics. In that case you are not 
especially interested in a small family group in 
a Bethlehem stable. But if you are to consider 

273 



274 



MAGIC WELLS 



Christianity in all of its human bearings, if 
you are to take into account its sentimental 
values, its appeal to the poetic emotions of the 
soul, its relation to all the beautiful symbolism 
of the fireside, then the babe of Bethlehem 
becomes of great significance. 

It is precisely this aspect of our religion 
which gives it peculiar charm and greater 
power over the imagination of men. 

Your abstract maxim of virtue gets a better 
hold upon the will when it is associated with 
ideas that warm the affections and stir the 
tender passions of the heart. After all our 
emphasis upon mental sanity and cold reason, 
we must admit that the moral dynamics of 
life lie among the emotions. The strongest 
incentives of life originate in the sentimental 
things of life. Imagine for a moment what 
Christianity would have been without that 
poetic picture of the Nativity. 

Suppose these gospel birth-stories had never 
been told. Suppose the awe and wonder and 
worship beside the manger had never passed 
into Christian tradition. Suppose the mystery 
of birth and the charm of childhood and the 
visions of domestic love had never been inter- 



A LITTLE CHILD 



275 



woven with the beginnings of the New Testa- 
ment. Suppose Christianity had begun with 
the mature Jesus and his Galilean ministry. 
Do you not see that the Christian evangel 
would have been shorn of many of those ro- 
mantic and poetic features that have endeared 
it to the heart of the world? 

There would have remained, indeed, the 
essentials of its teaching. We should still have 
the Sermon on the Mount and the graphic 
parables and the great renunciation at the 
cross. But we should not have that imaginative 
background, which tinges sermon and parable 
and cross with its mystic light. It would be 
as if the day were ushered in at high noon, 
unheralded by the slanting sunbeams and the 
half-lights, the tender tints, the intangible gold 
of dawn. 

It is just this morning twilight, with its 
mystery of shadow and its clean fresh simplicity 
and its rosy clouds on the horizon, that gives 
to the gospel of Jesus its perfect setting and 
clothes his personality with peculiar interest. 

True? Of course they are true. I hope we 
are liberal enough to believe every word of 
them. Every mother holding her babe to her 



276 



MAGIC WELLS 



breast reads her own experiences into those 
stories. Every father looking into the eyes of 
his little child can testify to the reality of the 
open heavens and the angel song. They are 
true, as the allegory of "Pilgrim's Progress" 
is true. They are true, as one of Turner's 
landscapes is true. They are true, as life and 
love and beauty and idealism are true. 

"The babe lying in a manger !" That phrase 
has sanctified childhood for twenty centuries. 
It will continue to sanctify it forever. Chris- 
tianity is partly a cult of child-worship. It 
began there under the vibrant light of the 
Bethlehem star, and from that time forward a 
new reverence for the value of the child has been 
growing in the world. 

In the old pagan life there was no such 
loving devotion to childhood as we are familiar 
with to-day. The rights of the child and the 
obligations to care for the child were never 
seriously emphasized. "The child was the 
property of the father — to be reared if he 
pleased, to be put to death if he pleased." 
The weak, the incompetent, the crippled little 
ones could be cast into the rubbish heaps of 
the world ; their law and philosophy sanctioned 
the act. 



A LITTLE CHILD 



277 



It was Christianity holding aloft the picture 
of the Madonna and Child that rebuked this 
cruel indifference and waked the Western 
world at last to a consciousness of the solemn 
significance of human birth. In Rome and 
Corinth and Ephesus, it was the Christian 
mother rehearsing in her own heart the story 
of Mary of Bethlehem and seeing in the face 
of her own little Messiah suggestions of the 
Great Messiah's infant beauty, — it is this that 
has helped to destroy, more than we can tell, 
the old pagan indifference, and to put in its 
place the great idea that the child is a sacred 
trust. 

From holy child at Bethlehem to holy 
childhood everywhere was the simple and 
logical step for the Christian world to take. 
Out of this sentiment growing with the years 
has come those practical activities that seek to 
protect the child from harm and to guard its 
rights as a living soul. To-day it is the per- 
suasiveness of that symbol of the manger- 
cradle, that in large measure inspires the love 
and tender care toward the neglected and ill- 
born children of the world and enforces their 
right to join in the songs of a happy childhood. 



278 



MAGIC WELLS 



It still prompts our household joys on Christ- 
mas morning, and because of it our worship 
is tenderer, our humanities are sweeter, and our 
homes are holier. 

We stand reverently beside the manger, 
because in the childhood of Jesus we find the 
ideal expression of the law of the world. 

First, a little babe hung upon the straw and 
watched over by the Galilean mother. That 
was the advent of the greatest soul in history. 
That was the beginning of the gospel of Chris- 
tianity. 

Who could divine what was folded up in 
that little brain? Who could guess that those 
baby hps would one day proclaim the glad 
tidings of man's divinity and God's abundant 
love? 

Nothing there but a speechless, helpless, 
innocent babe in a manger! Yes, something 
more. And that more was the ideal possibility 
hidden in the child's soul. And that child 
plus the possibility becomes the ideal expres- 
sion of the law of the world. For everything 
that is good in the universe came into it as a 
simple living possibility, and no more. 



A LITTLE CHILD 



279 



There are no ready-made things, complete 
and perfect, dropped down from the open skies. 
The law of evolution holds sway from star- 
dust to man, from matter to spirit, and requires 
everything to start from atomic dimensions and 
small beginnings. 

The Colorado canyon began with a grain 
of sand and a moving drop of water. This 
government began by a political protest voiced 
by one man to another on the street. 

Philosophy began as a simple spirit of 
wonder before the mystery of the Universe. 
Religion began as a faint, vague endeavor to 
grasp an ideal. 

Character began as a small resolve, and it 
begins to-day when a man sets a resolution 
squarely in the way of any unrighteous habit. 

Christianity began, not as a spectacular and 
world-wide revolution, but as a religious pos- 
sibility slumbering in the heart of Mary's 
child. 

That is God's law of beginnings. And with 
the knowledge of that law operative every- 
where, we ought to be afraid and reverential 
and encouraged, all at the same time. 

As we look down into the face of the boy or 



280 



MAGIC WELLS 



girl — anybody's boy or girl — who knows what 
possibilities of power and service are waiting- 
there to get out? We ought to be afraid to do 
that child a wrong — for in so doing we may be 
playing the role of Herod, who would have 
destroyed the infant Jesus in his cradle. 

As we look down into our hearts, we ought 
to feel a new reverence for the divine nature 
that is ours. Again, who knows what we are 
and what we may become? There are pos- 
sibilities yet undeveloped. There are ideals 
yet unknown. There are moral visions yet 
unseen. We ought to reverence the mystery 
of our own souls. As we look out over our 
activities in the world, we ought to take heart 
and be of great courage. The law of begin- 
nings is our friend. 

Every great redemptive movement for 
humanity started in some one man's earnest 
desire. Your heart is on fire to abolish some 
economic wrong or social evil. That is the 
cradle of a great possibility. You need not 
hire a hall, or ring the bells, or fill the sky 
with rockets. That is not the way. You are 
one determined man. To-day you quietly 
make a disciple. You have doubled your nu- 



A LITTLE CHILD 



281 



merical strength. To-morrow you two go forth 
and make two more disciples. You are now 
four times stronger than you were at the be- 
ginning. And if you keep on at that rate, at 
the end of only twenty days you will have a 
solid phalanx of over eight hundred thousand 
men standing under your banner and fighting 
for your cause! We ought to feel encouraged. 
The law of beginnings is our friend. 

"And the child grew and waxed strong, 
filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was 
upon him." 

That gives us the true moral perspective of 
life. The law of perspective requires that all 
objects in a picture shall stand in their right 
relations to one another. Those in the fore- 
ground must be of one size, those in the middle 
distance of another, and those of the back- 
ground of still another, so that the beholding 
eye shall perceive no distortion or unreality 
of dimension. 

That law holds good outside of pictures. 
It applies, or ought to apply, to all the chang- 
ing phases and periods of the growing life. 
The ideal life is the life that is simply and 



282 



MAGIC WELLS 



naturally true to the conditions of the period 
through which it happens to be passing. It 
would be manifestly absurd to put a full- 
grown man into the cradle or to put a child 
into the garb of maturity. 

Jesus was a babe in a manger, and what 
was required of him there, was to be an ideal 
babe, and nothing more. Anything greater 
than that would have been unideal and a 
monstrous perversion of nature. Then we see 
him as child in the Nazareth home, growing 
in grace and wisdom, again true to that phase 
of his life. Then as a youth we behold him 
among the doctors of the law, asking strange 
and puzzling questions. The normal and 
healthy youth always has been and always will 
be asking such questions of his elders. Then 
we see him the fully-developed man thinking 
great thoughts and taking hold of the problems 
of the time with a man's power. There is life 
as God intended it, — a child when a child and 
a man when a man. 

We have some apocryphal gospels which 
retell the story of Jesus' infancy. Everything 
is fanciful, unreal, monstrous. We have him 
speaking all languages, and talking like a 



A LITTLE CHILD 283 

philosopher, and performing the most aston- 
ishing miracles. He is a giant in swaddling 
clothes. He is all out of perspective, and there- 
fore out of law and truth and life. 

We are glad that these gospels of the In- 
fancy fell away from the Christian tradition 
and left in the foreground a natural, whole- 
some, and ideal child. 

As it was with the childhood of Jesus, so 
should it be with every child to-day. As it 
was with the manhood of Jesus, so should it be 
with every man in the world. We do not want 
infant prodigies. We do not want our children 
to grow up before their time. 

We do not want to see a solemn-faced baby 
gravely climbing out of the cradle and asking 
for the tools of duty. Any system of education 
or any social training that takes a child away 
from its rightful periods of simplicity and 
imagination, is interfering with the funda- 
mental principles of life. 

There is a time to play and a time to work. 
Let us not, in our zealous worship of the gods 
of work, destroy out of the heavens the gods 
of laughter and innocent joy. The ideal child 
is the child that responds naturally and un- 



284 



MAGIC WELLS 



consciously to the environment of childhood. 
The ideal man is the man who has put away 
childish things and answers freely to the call 
of a man's estate. 

Once more we stand at the manger-cradle 
and learn the lesson that the eternal secret of 
happiness lies in the growing and expanding 
life. Life means nothing, unless it is moving 
forward from more to more. The stagnant 
pool has no music. It simply stands still, while 
mosses prey upon it and reptiles make it their 
habitation. It is the running brook that sings, 
as it passes through sunshine and shadow and 
from point to point. It is going somewhere 
and is growing stronger and larger all the time. 
Likewise the stagnant life, the unprogressive 
mind, the indolent soul, becomes sick of itself. 
It is always looking upon the same things and 
so becomes bored and unhappy. 

The real joy of living is the joy of motion, 
the joy of changing experiences and new visions, 
the joy of finishing to-day's duty and then 
with additional skill and confidence going for- 
ward to the new service of to-morrow. 

That is precisely what Paul meant when he 



A LITTLE CHILD 



285 



said, "I leave the things that are behind and 
press forward with joy to the prize of my high 
calling.' ' 

You sometimes pray to be let alone. You 
want to sit down and rest. You find some 
bower of ease, where the roses bloom and the 
bees drone out their monotonous tune. That 
is ideal, and you think you will be happy there 
forever. If after the first day you are still 
content, count it an evil sign. It is a symp- 
tom of death. 

If you are alive, you will be tired of it before 
the day is over and will want to go forth to 
find lovelier roses and more musical bees. 

There is nothing in earth or heaven you 
would not get tired of, if it were continuously 
the same. 

You who are lovers would weary of your 
love, if it possessed no elements of growth. 

You who work would find every task im- 
measurably dull, unless it were increasing in 
significance from day to day. You who dream 
of celestial Paradise are already intolerant of 
the old idea that it is a place where "congrega- 
tions ne'er break up and Sabbaths never end." 

What a beautiful arrangement it is, that life 



286 



MAGIC WELLS 



hurries us on from stage to stage. We play a 
little while with the toys of childhood, and then, 
just as they become frayed and uninteresting, 
we pass out into the land of youthful vision, 
and then, just as we become impatient to make 
the vision real, we find ourselves in the vast 
workshop of the world's affairs. The day 
passes, full of the joy of creation and the inspira- 
tion of service, and then, just as our busy hands 
begin to fail and our shoulders to bend with 
age, — just as we begin to long for the evening 
twilight and home and rest, — God's angel 
touches our foreheads with his soft pinions 
and we fall asleep, still hoping, dreaming of 
another dawn and a longer day. 

Did Jesus find the secret of the happy 
life? — He, the man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief? 

I think so — and far more certainly and 
profoundly than we suppose. You call it a 
life full of tragedy and defeat, — nay, rather full 
of great triumphs and noble joys and splendid 
experiences. 

It was only nine miles from Bethlehem to 
Calvary. But think what magnificent dis- 
tances that soul had to travel, from the manger 



A LITTLE CHILD 



287 



to the cross. Think of the inner conquests, 
the superb visions, the glorious moral scenery, 
the spiritual exaltations, the delight and solemn 
joy of sweeping forward in great impulses of 
growth — think of all these life experiences that 
lay between the babe looking up at the shep- 
herds with wondering eyes and the man look- 
ing down from the cross upon the blood-thirsty 
mob and saying, "Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do." 

It was a life of great joy, because it was a 
life of great growth. 

I welcome you into that happiness. May 
we all feel, beneath our superficial joys, this 
deeper, steadier current of gladness and peace, 
that comes from the consciousness that we are 
increasing in wisdom and growing in the grace 
of ideal manhood and womanhood. If we can 
feel that — feel that we are growing finer and 
better because of life's experiences, then every 
sorrow becomes transfigured and every success 
doubly significant. 

The secret of happiness is no secret at all. 
It is the natural, inevitable result of taking 
one step after another into the largeness and 
fullness of life. 



288 



MAGIC WELLS, 



Grow in the love of truth, in deeper insight 
into the right, in dedication of the personal 
will to the just cause, in breadth of sympathy 
and sweep of good-will — and just as the song- 
birds come to the springtime with music, so 
you will come to every new day, every new 
duty, every new stage of life, with serene confi- 
dence, and a song upon your lips. 

Our Heavenly Father, in the spirit 
of gladness and good-will, teach us to 
walk in the way of human service and 
meet the events of the unfolding years. 
Amen. 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 



"And I saw the dead small and great stand 
before God, and the books were opened: and 
another book was opened which is the book 
of life: and the dead were judged out of the 
things which were written in the books, accord- 
ing to their works. And whosoever was not 
found written in the book of life, was con- 
demned." — Rev. xxi. 1. 

NO one understands the weird, extrava- 
gant vision which closes our New Tes- 
tament Scriptures. It has bewildered and 
baffled every Biblical scholar who ever ven- 
tured into its fantastic labyrinth. 

The passage which I have just read is 
supposed to refer to some final judgment day 
when an alabaster Jerusalem shall suddenly 
appear on the earth, and before the great white 
throne in the midst thereof, shall gather the 
multitudinous dead, to receive their long- 
delayed punishment and rewards. 

I confess to no interest in that kind of 
judgment day. It is too far over the horizon of 
probability to deserve serious attention. There 
is a much nearer judgment day, so near that 

291 



292 



MAGIC WELLS 



it ceases to be probable and becomes actual, 
and that is every day. In the divine economy 
every deed casts its own shadow, and that 
shadow, so to speak, carries the lance of pain 
or the crown of recompense. It is a daily 
experience. 

We do not have to wait until after we are 
dead to get what we deserve; and even if 
there were to be a great final court, its judg- 
ments could only be the mere formality of 
confirming what we had already received in 
actual life. I am therefore not interested in 
hypothetical heavens and hells, but I am 
interested in the opening of those books; and 
since we do not know precisely what the 
writer means, I take the liberty of removing 
them from the shelves of some remote, apoc- 
ryphal court-room and, bringing them back to 
our own time and place, using them as the 
records, not penned by some secretarial angel, 
but as the diary which every man uncon- 
sciously writes in his own character and nature. 

You will observe that there are books, and 
another book. 

The first are just raw books, figures, ledger 
accounts, digital tracings of securities, additions 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 293 

and multiplications — the arithmetic of success 
or failure — items of material prosperity — of 
worldly ambitions attained — of cleverly and 
victoriously "getting there." 

They are not, however, such dull books as 
they appear. The digits are very common- 
place, it is true. Every schoolboy knows 
them and is tired of the sight of them. But 
around and through every one is twined much 
romance, heroic pluck, patience, sacrifice, per- 
severance, eager industry. It is not a bad 
record for a being that is all head, and has no 
way of computing life save in arithmetical 
terms. And there is no hint anywhere in these 
books that man is anything more than that — 
just a calculating brain. 

Now comes the book which the writer sets 
apart from the other books. He calls it the 
book of life. I take it to mean that it is the 
record of what a man becomes as a living soul. 
Not what he gets, not what he squeezes with 
clutched hand out of the universe, but what he 
feels and responds to and grows into as he moves 
about in the universe. 

There are no figures in that book — no sym- 
bols of quantity or weight or area. You could 



294 



MAGIC WELLS 



understand your own book, but you could not 
understand your neighbor's. For the record 
consists of emotions, sympathies, apprecia- 
tions, aspirations, moral possessions, character 
values, and you cannot express these intangible 
realities in letters or digits of universal com- 
prehension. It is the book of the soul's 
growth. 

As you turn over the leaves, it may seem 
even duller and less significant than the other 
books, but in reality it is weightier, more valu- 
able, and more practical than are the others 
put together. I linger on that word practical, 
for it is the keynote of our theme. Here are 
the open books. On the one side are the 
records of the tangible visible things which 
you have conquered from the world. They 
show in black and white just what you are 
worth as a human brain. On the other side 
is the book of life, which shows what you are 
worth as a soul — your degree of ownership 
in the intangible values, what you have come 
to be as a spiritual citizen in a spiritual world. 

Now, if the question were put as to which 
book indicates the practical use of existence, 
the practical worth of living — if such a question 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 295 



were put to the world at large and a secret 
ballot taken, I suspect the book of life would 
be in a hopeless minority. What it records 
might be deemed ornamental, poetically de- 
sirable, proper enough as moral embroidery, 
but the practical, efficient employment of our 
faculties would be supposed to be described in 
the books of business and trade and actual 
achievement. 

That is the general feeling, I think, toward 
the values that deepen and beautify and en- 
large the spiritual experiences of life. It is 
well enough to have them, if there is room, to 
spare, but they are not essential, not the first 
choice, not of great practical importance. The 
Persian poet who said if he had only two loaves 
of bread in the desert, he would sell one and 
buy a hyacinth, would be pronounced a hope- 
less fool in Wall Street. 

For we call ourselves a very practical people. 
We like to get on — get things done — get to 
our destination by the lightning express. Give 
me hammer and nails and a board and I'll 
build a box. I can handle it and count its 
corners and find it where I put it when I get 
up in the morning. That is the idea. We 



296 



MAGIC WELLS 



believe in box-building. It is so practical and 
this is the practical age. 

Now it is fair at this point to ask for a defini- 
tion of the practical. It may be that we have 
overloaded that word with bales and boxes 
and forced it to serve solely in a bread-and- 
butter capacity. Emerson recalls us to one 
hard fact, and it is well for us to get that fact 
in the center of vision. He says that the ideal 
is the only real, That means that a sentiment 
is more substantial than a dollar bill, that love 
is stronger than iron bars, that patriotism is 
more solid than a fortress wall, and that the 
universe with its ponderous worlds is bal- 
anced on a thought. 'The things that are 
seen are temporal, but the things that are un- 
seen are eternal." 

Now what is the practical? It is anything 
that ministers to the welfare of a human soul; 
and the thing that ministers most, that en- 
hances most the blessedness and significance of 
living, is the most practical. If that be true, 
then there must be a readjustment of values, 
and many a material essential becomes a need- 
less luxury and many a spiritual embroidery 
becomes an absolute necessity. And so the 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 297 



hyacinth comes into its own, and the exchange 
of a loaf becomes a wise and practical trans- 
action. 

What is the test of the practical? 

I. First, as has been intimated, it must 
be useful, helpful, creative. If a man were a 
stomach and nothing more, we could draw 
a circle around the food market and say, 
'There is the practical thing of life." But he 
is vastly more than an appetite. His hungers 
mount to heaven, and if these are not fed, he 
is a half-starved skeleton, though he be prince 
of the market. I said the first test is useful- 
ness. Do not outrage that word by pinch- 
ing it to its lowest terms. It has great func- 
tions and performs those functions as it seizes 
on the ideal things and feeds them to the higher 
hungers of the soul. What is useful hangs on 
the need of it, and if the greatest need is to make 
life interesting and beautiful, then the most 
useful things cannot be measured by the scales 
or the yardstick. 

II. The second test of the practical is to 
be many-sided. That may be a business heresy, 
but I am talking about the full abundant life 



298 



MAGIC WELLS 



and not about the virtues of a human gimlet. 
It is practical, we are told, to specialize, to 
sharpen one faculty to a point and never mind 
the other faculties. We want efficiency, it is 
said, and the efficient man is the man who knows 
one job and never misses a stroke. Modem 
education is growing in emphasis on that word 
"efficiency." We are going to get tired of it 
some day, unless we have already petrified into 
specialized machines. A young man goes to 
a college and elects to become, we will say, a 
medical expert. He concentrates thought, en- 
ergy, life, on a certain square inch of the human 
anatomy. He knows it thoroughly, but he 
knows nothing else in the infinite universe. His 
other faculties have atrophied. He is not ed- 
ucated. He is an efficient gimlet. There is 
no objection to specialization in any depart- 
ment of service. There is so much to be known 
and so much to be done, that men must choose 
what to know well and what to do well, but 
that duty does not exclude the other duty of 
being a whole man with a foursquare frontage 
to the rich environment of life. And I venture 
to say that your expert who is drawing divi- 
dends from the investment of other faculties 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 299 

besides the highly specialized one is a better 
expert, and certainly a happier and broader 
man. 

I believe in smatterings. I believe in know- 
ing at least a little of the so many things of 
which Stevenson says the world is full. I be- 
lieve that life should he, not like a canal with 
prim edges and banked dykes, but like a lake, 
deep at the center, and its shallow rim making 
excursions into the fragrant woodlands to 
receive the tribute of hillside springs. The 
fullness of living consists in the number of 
sympathetic contacts which existence has with 
the surrounding universe. An oyster has one 
contact, we will say. The fish has more. The 
bird still more. The man has as many as he 
chooses. With that magnificent privilege he 
has no right to go back and be an oyster. He 
has no right, after God has given him ten 
talents, to tie nine of them up in a napkin and 
spend the other one so that he shall come to 
the end of life an intellectual wreck, or a moral 
wreck, or a physical wreck. He owes it to 
himself, to society, to the Giver of gifts, to be- 
come the full, round, appreciative, many-sided, 
complete man. 



300 



MAGIC WELLS 



That is being practical — permitting no idle 
capital. 

III. A third test of the practical life is but 
the application of the second. It is the ac- 
ceptance of the hospitality of things. This 
universe is the best conceivable friend, the 
wisest counsellor, the most genial playmate. 
Everything in it holds out hands of welcome. 
"Come sail with me," cries the rosy cloud. 
"Come visit me," says the mountain. "Come 
play with me," says the little child. "Come 
talk with me," says the murmuring brook. 
"Come sing with me," says the poet. "Come 
lend me your hand," says the social world. 
"Come up and watch the march of the human 
spirit," says history. "Come eat at the table 
I have spread for you," says the Creator of all. 
And the man answers: "No, I cannot. I am 
too busy turning the crank of my machine." 
That is not practical. It is moral and mental 
suicide. 

It is a very wonderful world, churched in 
miracle, staging spectacles every hour, flinging 
marvels at our feet, opening wide the doors of 
gracious opportunity, and all the while, as 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 



301 



Emerson scornfully says, we stand in practical 
unconcern and practically nibble our practical 
morning apple. That is a pathetic state of 
mind to be in. It is not practical to be a mental 
or moral hermit. It is not practical to be out 
of touch with your fellows. It is not practical 
to be so unresponsive that your fellows prefer 
to be out of touch with you. It is not practical 
to go through this world and know nothing 
but an acre of its surface, to feel nothing but 
the mechanical pulsations of a heart, to see 
nothing but the dim line of a narrow path, 
and to hear nothing but the sound of your own 
footsteps. 

It is practical to roam over the universe, 
feel perfectly at home in it, and have at least 
a speaking acquaintance with people and things. 
The inevitable years come and go. The birth- 
days file by and the interval between seems to 
grow shorter and shorter. The meridian of 
life is past, and the shadows lengthen as we 
go down the other slope. It is going to be sun- 
set after a while — the pale light of the even- 
ing star. The old friendships will shrink in 
number and the comrades of other days one 
by one will vanish away. A younger genera- 



302 



MAGIC WELLS 



tion will discount our activities, and our name in 
the market will become a faded memory. 

The world becomes strangely hollow and 
empty. A querulous voice rouses ghostly 
echoes, and the trembling fingers of an aged 
man are seen feeling for the latch of the 
outer gate. That is the way the story once 
was told. The new story is of a world 
jubilantly full, and resonant of life — the 
rosy clouds still sailing overhead, the poet 
still singing his song, the good God still 
calling to the daily feast, and an aged 
man, never so alive as at this hour, rejoicing in 
the happy wisdom of great experiences, and 
still eagerly accepting the hospitality of the 
abundant world, because all through the pass- 
ing years he had been so practical as to acquire 
the habit of the flexible mind and the spiritual 
tastes of the responsive soul. And alone! Yes, 
at times, but never in such good company as 
when he is so ! For he can close the door, and 
lo, he is the cosmopolitan citizen of the uni- 
verse shut in the picture-gallery of beautiful 
and noble memories. That is not loneliness! 

The wealth of the spirit is the real wealth 
of all times, but never so real, adequate as 
when life approaches the sunset gate. 



THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS 303 

And they whose names were not found in 
the book of life were condemned! The condem- 
nation is automatic. We do not have what we 
have not acquired. The penalty is not having. 
The reward is having. 

Our Heavenly Father, we thank 
Thee that our hungers mount to 
Heaven, Open the Heaven of life 
and guide us to our place at Thy 
table. Amen. 



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